


Fairground Echoes

by Omorka



Category: Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Gen, Sexual Themes, Subtext, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:46:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ghostbusters are called to a small town in upstate New York to take care of a local haunting, but some of the locals remember Peter from his carnival days - and not all in a friendly way.  (Contains a past relationship between Peter and an OFC.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairground Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> For a gen story, there really are a lot of sexual themes, including some implications about Our Heroes's pasts and preferences, so proceed with caution if that's going to be squicky for you in either direction. Mentions a past relationship between Peter and an OFC. Many, many thanks to The Laughing Rat for her beta job; all remaining errors are mine, not hers.

"I hate these upstate jobs. They're always too much hassle for too little pay, and half the time Ecto breaks down on the way back," griped Peter, leaning forward with his arms crossed on the back of Ecto-1's front bench seat.

"Well, Pete, I'm a little surprised to hear you complaining about it," smirked Winston as he wished, not for the first time, that Peter would wear his shoulder belt as well as the lap belt. "I mean, you're the one who scheduled us for this bust."

"Yeah, well, we're running a little too close to the red line for comfort this month. Even if they're not paying enough, they're still paying us, and we've gotta keep the lights on somehow." Peter ran a hand through his hair and grimaced. "Doesn't mean I have to enjoy it."

"It's okay, old girl, the nasty man in the back seat didn't mean it," Ray clucked, stroking the dashboard. Peter and Egon exchanged a glance; usually Ray confined his habit of talking to inanimate objects to ones that were at least vaguely anthropomorphic, but Ecto had been an exception since they bought her.

"I'll have you know I am not nasty, Ray. Why, I even washed my hair this morning," Peter responded.

Egon rolled his eyes again. "Since you talked to the client on the phone, Peter, suppose you give the rest of us a briefing on what to expect when we get there."

"Sure thing," replied Peter, fishing a folded piece of note paper out of his chest pocket. "It's in a little tiny town called Carter Lake, sort of north of Morrisville. Not quite your old stomping ground, Ray, but kind of close. Sounded reasonably picturesque, the way the guy described it. Anyway, there's an old building outside of town that was used as a seed warehouse and grain silo for a century or so. Some investor bought it about ten years ago to try to fix it up into a shopping center, and the project started out fine, but then things started happening - there was a fire in the main building, tools would fall off of scaffolding when no one was up there, random power failures, that kind of thing. Word got around that the project was jinxed, and the investor sold it off. One of the local guys who bought a share of it back then, name of Jeremiah Colewood, arrived back in town about a month ago; he wants to demolish the silo, build a bunch of apartments there instead, and convert the grain warehouse into a smaller version of the mall." Venkman looked up from the paper. "I don't know who he thinks is gonna move into the apartments. The whole town is only about 3,000 people." He returned to his notes. "Anyway, he's had trouble hiring workers because the place has the reputation for bad ju-ju. He went down to inspect the silo for himself, and he says he was attacked by what he described as a sheet of solid blackness - he shone his flashlight at it and the beam just disappeared, and when it nabbed him, he couldn't see or breathe. His driver fought it off by yelling at it and hitting it with a stick, and no one's been out there since." Peter re-folded the paper and tucked it back in his pocket. "That's the basic story. Any ideas, brainiacs?"

Egon had pulled out the digital copy of _Tobin's_ and was scrolling through entries. Ray had a thoughtful look. "Hmm. Did he have any more details on what it looked or acted like?"

"No, but we're going to meet him in town before we drive out to the property," Peter answered. "You can pump him for more information then. Getting anything, Egon?"

The team's physicist shook his head. "Not enough data. There are about a dozen types of spirit in the database that loosely fit the description. Some of them are relatively harmless Class Twos, some of them are Class Fives, and some of them are highly dangerous spirits in the higher classifications."

"You know how much I love it when you say things like that, Spengs." Peter leaned back against the seat and watched the landscape roll past.

"So, have any of you guys ever been out this way before? Ray, I know Pete said we weren't quite in your old neck of the woods, but any chance you've passed through the town on the way to somewhere else?"

"Maybe. My folks used to take car trips out that way every so often when I was little." Ray sighed, and Winston looked vaguely worried; Ray usually didn't mind being reminded of his parents, but he also generally tried not to dwell on them much. "But I don't remember Carter Lake specifically, either the town or the lake, so I'm pretty sure we never stopped there."

"The only parts of the state I'm familiar with are the ones around the city," Egon stated. "The branches of my family that haven't moved to California or Ohio are still mostly in New England, and I have done very little traveling for fun."

"Yeah, we knew that already, big guy." Peter grinned at the physicist, who gave him a disapproving look in return. Peter continued, "I actually spent about two weeks there once, between my junior and senior year of high school."

"That was one of the two summers you spent on the carnival circuit with your father, right?" asked Ray, suddenly interested.

"Yup. Dad was along for the second half, anyway; the first half I was with my aunt, his big sister." Peter looked nostalgic; the carnival tours were some of the few unmixed happy memories he had with his father. "Big Al's Carnival and Fun Fair stopped there between Oneida and Watertown. Probably the most excitement Carter Lake had seen in decades. We did great business; people came from seven counties to lose their money and get sick on cotton candy and caramel apples." He shook his head. "But I never really left the fairground. Well, that's not quite true." He grinned lasciviously. "I didn't see the rest of the town, though."

Egon harrumphed; Ray and Winston exchanged an amused glance. "Hey, I always meant to ask," Winston said, changing the subject, "how did you work the carnival and still stay on the football team? Don't they practice over summer?"

"Once I got admitted to Columbia, I couldn't," Peter pointed out. "That's the reason I didn't do the carnival tour that summer, and Dad had a hissy fit about it until Mom beat him over the head with my scholarship." He frowned; unlike Ray, who didn't have a problem remembering his deceased parents, Peter tried to avoid discussing his mother. "But in high school, summer practice didn't start until mid-August. I just had to arrange to be back by then." He grinned. "We had to share our field with a couple of other schools anyway. Turf is hard to come by in Brooklyn. How about you, Winston? Summer was your playing season, right?"

"Yeah, summer and winter, although my last year I didn't even try out for the basketball team. I wasn't tall enough. I did track instead." Winston checked the rear-view mirrors; the highway was mostly empty, which seemed odd for this time of day, but then again, he didn't do much rural driving. "Baseball ate up all my free time, anyway, and when I graduated I was so scared of getting drafted I joined the Army straight off the bat. The one scholarship offer I got wouldn't have covered everything I needed, either. I was good, but I wasn't great."

Egon and Ray shared an uncomfortable glance. While both of them had had scholarships to Columbia, they'd both been academic, not need-based. Ray couldn't have gone to an Ivy League school without the extra help, but his parents had left him enough to at least go to a state school; he'd had an average, middle-class upbringing until his parents had died. Egon's family could have paid for his education out of their own pockets without any real hardship. Hearing about Winston's working-class upbringing and Peter's nearly impoverished one always made them feel a little bit guilty, especially Spengler.

And of course, Peter noticed. "Well, no point in dwelling on our old glory days with these two devoted non-athletes around," he declared. "Any idea where we're going to stop for dinner? I'm getting hungry."

\---

It was well after dark when Ray spotted the sign that read "Now Entering The City of Carter Lake, Population 3,214." Peter removed the folded note from his pocket and switched on a flashlight to read the directions written on the back. "What street are we on, Winston?"

The oldest Ghostbuster scanned the intersection for signs. "We're either on Lake Street or Coolidge Boulevard. The street sign's at a weird angle."

"Well, if we're on Lake Street, then we want to turn left onto Camellia Avenue. If we're on Coolidge, then we wanted to turn onto Lake back there." Peter seemed unconcerned.

Ray rolled down the window and peered at the next signpost. "Lake Street and Fairground Lane. We must be on Lake."

Peter grinned. "And that would be my old stomping grounds back that-a-way. We'll have to swing by there on our way out of town."

"Why, Peter," Egon noted dryly, "After all your complaining about taking an upstate job, you sound positively nostalgic now."

"Nothing like it, old buddy," Peter denied. "Just want to see how it's changed over the years, is all." He was smiling despite himself.

"Lake and Camellia. This is where we want to turn, right, Peter?" Ray called back.

"No, left," Peter corrected, still smiling. Ray stuck his tongue out at him.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Winston, hitting the brakes in the middle of the turn. The other three looked back at the road in time to see a small figure - a kid, it looked like - dodge across the street in front of them. Winston straightened out, and the figure took off running down the street.

"What happened?" Ray asked, as Zeddemore let out a sigh of relief.

"He was jogging across the street, and I thought he was safely out of the way, but then he got a look at Ecto and just _stopped_, right there in the middle of the crosswalk." Winston looked troubled. "I almost didn't see him without any streetlights."

"You think he was just startled?" Ray mused.

"Just a doofus, if you ask me," grumbled Peter. "A kid his age shouldn't be out at this hour, anyway."

Egon was staring down the street in the direction the kid had run. "Something wrong, big guy?" Peter asked, elbowing him in the side lightly. Egon looked back, slightly startled. "No, but there was something - familiar about him." He frowned. "I'm not sure what, though."

Peter was distracted by the road ahead. "Winston, that next street ought to be Wisteria. If it is, turn right, and the bed and breakfast we're staying at will be the second building on the left."

"We're shelling out for a B&amp;B instead of a motel? The budget can't be hurting that bad," grinned Winston, making the turn and parking on the side of the street.

"It's more that the last motel in town went out of business three years ago, and our client's picking up the tab for our lodging starting tomorrow anyway." Peter opened the door and reached skyward, glad to finally stretch his legs. "Mr. Colewood's renovating the motel, too, but it's not ready for visitors yet. Right now he's got the crew working there instead of at the silo." He opened the back hatch of Ecto and grabbed his duffel bag. "Do you think we need to bring the packs in?"

"I'll feel safer if we do." Egon slid out of Ecto's back seat and rubbed the small of his back. "While I think it's unlikely that someone would try and break into Ecto, and even less likely that they would succeed with the defense system on, I find I am reluctant to take even that small risk."

"Okay, but we're gonna have to make two trips," Peter replied, tossing Egon's suitcase at him.

\---

"There's really not much more to say than what I told Dr. Venkman over the phone," their client shrugged. Jeremiah Colewood was a dark-haired man of medium height and wiry build, and he was fairly casually dressed in a slate blue turtleneck, tan sweater-vest, deck shoes, and khakis. "I had gone out to see what condition the place was in, whether there were any major repairs we needed to complete before I brought in an architect to start working out plans for the renovation. It was about 5 pm; the sun was low, but it was nowhere near dark yet. There was sunlight streaming in through the windows at the top of the warehouse when we went in. I found out that the power hadn't been hooked up yet, and I was crossing the main floor to find the breaker box and meter, when this thing, like a sheet of solid blackness, flew at me. It was like someone threw a massive blob of matte black paint in my direction. I had my flashlight out to look at the breaker box, and I tried shining it at the thing, but I didn't see any visible change at all. And then it was on top of me." He shuddered. "It was very cold, and very tangible - I couldn't breathe at all, like there was plastic over my face, and it felt like it was constricting me. I tried to struggle, but it was like I was pushing against tar or mud - it clung to me, but when I applied force to it, it oozed away and I couldn't get a grip on it. My driver, Warren, had come in with me, and he said he hit it with some sort of a tool handle that had been left in there. I didn't even feel it. It let go of me before I passed out from lack of air, and it swooped up into the rafters and just blended in with all the shadows up there. I'm afraid that at that point I was glad to be out of there alive, and we both ran." He flexed his fingers nervously. "You can do something about it, can't you?"

"As long as it really is a spectral manifestation, I'm sure we can," replied Egon, who had detected no residual readings on their client and was pointing his PKE meter around the dining room of the Bed and Breakfast. "Would it be possible for us to interview Mr. Warren?"

"His name is Warren Schmetterling, and yes, he'll be here to pick me up in about half an hour." Mr. Colewood picked up a bagel from the table and began gnawing at the edges, more out of anxiety than hunger, it looked like. Their hostess, a pleasantly plump lady named Marissa Martinez with streaks of gray in her hair, began clearing the Ghostbusters' dishes from the table, as they'd finished eating before their client arrived.

"Did the blackness look solid, like a material substance, or nebulous, like smoke?" asked Ray, jotting something on a notepad.

"I'm not sure - wait, no. The edges looked like they had been solid but were dissolving, perhaps. At least, they were misty; I could sort of see through them. Most of it, I couldn't say - it was almost as if light just slipped off of it, or it absorbed it. It felt more liquid than solid or gaseous, very viscous." Mr. Colewood broke off part of the bagel and rolled it between his fingers, caught between needing to remember and clearly not wanting to.

Egon glanced at Ray's notes, and queried, "Did it have any visible features, such as eyes or a mouth?"

Colewood frowned slightly. "If it did, I didn't see them. I got the sense that it was looking at me when it dove for me, but that's just a gut feeling."

Ray nodded. "And you said it felt cold. Did it leave any ectoplasm on you?"

"Yes," their client nodded. "A very heavy, sticky, dark substance, almost like crude oil, but it dried out and then evaporated. There weren't even any traces in my clothes by two hours later."

"I wish all slime did that," Peter interjected. Ray shushed him. "You didn't manage to save any of it?"

"No, I'm sorry." Mr. Colewood hung his head slightly. "I didn't think about that until after I washed it off of myself, and I intended to keep the soiled shirt as a sample, but when we discovered that it had evaporated, I went ahead and had the shirt laundered. I realized later that it might contain miniscule traces still, but by then it was too late."

"I see." Ray continued making notes. "Well, guys, do you think we're ready to go out there?"

Egon shook his head. "Not until we interview Mr. Schmetterling."

"Lucky for you, he's arrived early," announced Mrs. Martinez, glancing out the window. A Mercedes pulled up to the curb, parking just behind Ecto, and a tall, ruggedly handsome man with greying hair and oddly narrow shoulders for the rest of his frame stepped out of the driver's-side door. Mrs. Martinez went to the front and ushered him into the dining room. He took a seat next to Mr. Colewood, crossed his legs, and set his hands in his lap, looking at the Ghostbusters with a sort of amused curiosity.

"Mr. Schmetterling, could you please describe the events that took place at the grain warehouse?" Egon leveled the PKE meter at the driver without looking at it. Peter was mentally chiding Egon for his overzealousness when the antennae stirred. Just once, but they clearly moved. Maybe Egon wasn't being paranoid after all.

"Certainly." The driver looked upward as he thought. "Mr. Colewood entered the building to do a cursory inspection, and we discovered that the power was off. We set out to inspect the breaker box. We were perhaps a third of the way across the ground floor when this thing - I'm not sure I can describe it well -" He trailed off, and drummed his fingers against the table. "It was almost like it was the absence of something, rather than the presence of something. As if light and sound fell into a hole there. Does that make sense?"

"It more or less matches Mr. Colewood's description," Egon agreed. "Go on, please."

"It flew directly at Mr. Colewood and appeared to - engulf him. I looked around and found a wooden handle, about two and a half feet long. Possibly it had belonged to an axe or a sledgehammer; it didn't have any sort of tool head on at the time. I swung it at the hole, and struck something solid. I'm sorry, 'solid' isn't quite the right word. Have you ever poked at wet concrete or soft asphalt with a stick? The sensation was similar." The driver shifted uncomfortably. "After three or four blows, it let Mr. Colewood go and flew straight up. I'm afraid I lost track of it at that point; my impulse was to make sure that my employer was safe and to get him out of danger." He looked at each of their faces, and seemed to settle on Peter. "When I swung at it, I'm sure I must have struck Mr. Colewood through it at least once, but I didn't feel any such impact."

"Do you remember what its general shape was?" asked Ray.

He looked up and to the left. "I'm not sure. I want to say it was roughly circular, with irregular edges, but it approached us very quickly and left the same way. I could be wrong."

"Did you see any eyes, or any evidence of a mouth?" Ray scribbled a few more words.

"I'm sure I didn't see eyes. There might have been something mouthlike at its center, but it was so hard to see, I can't be sure." The driver shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm not being much help, am I?"

Ray smiled at him. "We just need to get as much information as possible. I think that's probably enough. Thanks." The two shook hands as the driver stood. Mr. Schmetterling murmured "The car is ready whenever you wish to leave," to his employer, and left the room, looking slightly more pale than he had when he entered.

Mr. Colewood got to his feet, too. "Unless you have more questions for me, I need to head over to my office. This has the exterior keys for both the warehouse and the silo," he said, passing a half-sheet-sized manilla envelope to Peter. "If you need access to anything else, or if you come up with any further questions, please call my secretary and she'll get the message directly to me."

"No problem. We'll get right on it," promised Peter as their client headed out.

The four Ghostbusters turned to each other. "What was that on the meter, Spengs?" Peter asked, casually.

"Fading residual readings. Very strange ones. They indicate that Mr. Schmetterling has recently had contact with a fairly powerful entity - possibly a Class Six or Seven - _much_ more recently than the event they described. I would guess that the contact occurred no more than twelve and no less than six hours ago." Egon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It is likely, although not certain, that it is the same entity."

"Do you think he's working for it?" Winston asked.

Egon shook his head. "Not enough information to tell. He doesn't show any of the usual markers of possession or mental control; those would have made the meter react much more strongly. It's just as possible that the entity visited him in his sleep and he is unaware of it."

"What about their descriptions?" Ray eyed Peter carefully.

"I didn't see any signs that they were lying. They might both have been leaving something out, but if so, I don't know what." Peter glanced around the rest of the team. "Any other observations?"

"It sounded like they'd already rehearsed their stories so they had them straight," offered Winston.

"Good call. I think you're right. Not that that means they're trying to fool us; they could have both written down what happened right before Colewood called us, and be remembering the written account." Peter nodded. "So what's our next move?"

"We don't have enough information to narrow down our search in _Tobin's_," Ray said in a disappointed tone. Then he perked back up. "So I guess we'll just have to investigate for ourselves!"

"My favorite part," sighed Peter, hoisting his pack from the floor.

\---

The morning sun streamed thinly through high windows coated with over a decade's worth of dust and grime as Peter shouldered his way through the door. Winston followed after him, thrower out and powered up. They stepped to either side of the door, inspecting the room, as Ray and Egon joined them, PKE meters out. The antennae opened to a 120° angle and blinked, but didn't stir further, as the meters chirruped and fell silent.

"So tell me what's going on here, Egon," Peter suggested, thrower still in hand. "You getting something?"

"Very recent residual readings," Egon answered, holding the meter up and pointing it towards the rafters. "A strong Class Six, positive valence. If it's currently present, it's inactive. Perhaps the sunlight is keeping it quiescent." He gestured towards the windows.

"So were any of the things you guys looked up in _Tobin's_ earlier Class Sixes?" Winston asked, eyes still scanning the rafters.

"Nothing that we weren't able to eliminate on the basis of Colewood's description," Ray responded, looking at the footprints and scuffs in the dust on the floor. "If he's relating the incident correctly, and if it's really a Class Six, it's not anything in any of the references we brought with us. Egon, can you tell whether it's a nether entity or native to this plane?"

Egon shook his head. "That can be difficult to discern when the entity is right in front of us. From these residuals, I'd be guessing at best."

Ray followed a set of footprints away from the door. "These look like the most recent ones." Peter started shadowing Ray, making sure he was covered in case the entity chose to attack the curious engineer.

"Maybe we have to go out into its territory to wake it up," Winston suggested.

"Possible. In a building this large, it might have a specific space within it that it protects, rather than the entire structure." Egon started to follow Ray and Peter.

Peter looked down at the floor. "This must be where it happened." There were scuff marks in the dust; it looked like there had been a struggle, but there were only two sets of footprints. A length of wood lay on the floor, stained darker at one end. "Hey, guys, this must be Schmetterling's axe handle."

Ray waved the PKE meter around. "I'm not seeing any change in the readings here. I don't think this part of the building is more haunted than the rest." He seemed disappointed.

"What about the axe handle?" Winston called out. Ray bent down to scan it. Egon looked up, in Peter's direction, and their eyes met. Peter took a few steps over, and picked up the length of wood. He examined the stained end.

"Maybe slightly higher, but not much. About what you'd expect if it had made physical contact." Ray looked at Peter, who was frowning. "What's wrong?"

"Ray, take a look at this." Peter handed him the headless tool. "What is it?"

Ray looked at it. "Probably not an axe handle, actually; an axe would be curved. I'd guess it's the handle for a splitting maul. Possibly a sledgehammer, but it'd be kind of a short one." He handed it to Winston. "You know construction tools better than I do."

Winston looked it over, then gave it a practice swing. "Yeah, it could be a sledgehammer handle, but you're right, it'd be a little short for one."

Peter looked at Egon again; Egon nodded. Peter looked back at Ray. "What's a splitting maul?"

Ray looked at Peter sharply, then shook his head. "City slickers."

"Hey, not all of us grew up on fresh air and farmland. Gimme a hand, here." Peter and Ray grinned at each other.

Ray held the handle out and explained, "It's basically a wedge for splitting wood, except it's mounted on the end of a handle like this. You stand a section of a log on end, and then swing it down so the sharp end of the wedge hits the center of the log." Ray demonstrated swinging the handle. "If you're good and the log is small enough, it'll just split in half from the force of the blow. If it's too big, then you hit the flat end of the wedge with a mallet until the log splits."

Peter nodded. "So why would a maul handle be in here?"

Egon turned to Winston. "You said it might be a short sledgehammer handle. Would it make sense for that to be on a construction site?"

Winston frowned. "Yes, but only if the head were also around somewhere. And you'd mostly use it for breaking down drywall and other interior walls you didn't want. I don't see any of that around here." He looked around. "That really is weird. Unless someone dropped it on the way out, this would be a strange place to just find that."

The sunlight dimmed as a cloud passed over the sun outside. Ray nodded. "And I don't see any place on the floor near here that looks like that handle's dust-shadow."

The antennae on Egon's meter snapped to attention, followed by Ray's. Both meters began to breedle and whistle. Egon looked up and pointed. "There!" Above them was a solid shadow, a patch where no light reflected or escaped. It moved like it was weightless, flickering from rafter to rafter.

"It's using the structural beams as cover," growled Winston in a low voice.

A hollow chuckle floated down. "It has no shadow because it was brought. The other thought to be rid of me, but I am not so easily banished."

"You mean Mr. Colewood? He sent us to get rid of you. He didn't think you existed until he saw you." Ray clipped his meter to his belt and drew his thrower.

"No, not him. They both stank of the other, and I chose the wrong one. No doubt the other intended it to be so." The shadow drew back. "It is the other who interferes with mortal lives. I defend my home, no more. Why do you bother me?"

"Sorry, pal, but humans made this place, and by mortal laws, you're trespassing." Peter edged around until he was reasonably sure he could get a stream between the shadow and Egon if it dove for him.

"You . . . " The shadow stirred. "The other sent you, too."

"Mr. Colewood sent us. Make up your mind, is he the 'other' or not?" Peter scanned the rafters. The shadow spread out and disappeared.

"Is it gone?" Winston looked wary.

"No, I'm still reading the active entity. It has thinned out its essence to cover a wider area. Stay alert." Egon shifted the meter to his left hand and drew his thrower with his right.

Suddenly the shadow coalesced again, a few meters above Peter's head, and dropped onto him. Peter yelped, dodged, and got off a wild shot that barely winged the solid darkness; he saw Ray's stream go wild and Winston's only graze it before he was engulfed.

He couldn't breathe; the entity pressed against him like something solid, the stickiest, most cohesive ectoplasm it had ever been his misfortune to be slimed by. He pushed against it, but it was like fighting quicksand. He stumbled and lost his footing, but he didn't hit the ground - the entity must be holding him up. His head was spinning from lack of air. Somewhere a thrower blazed and crackled - wait, didn't he still have his thrower in his hands? With effort, Peter forced his finger back to the firing button; it was like trying to type through asphalt. The pack on his back whined and buzzed; it wasn't getting any air, either -

The shadow broke away and flung him onto the floor; Peter landed half on his side and half on his butt, and yelped in pain and surprise. His thrower slid from his hands and clattered on the concrete. He heard, rather than saw, Egon break off from the fight and race to his side. "Peter? Are you all right?"

"Bruised and out of breath, Egon. I'll live." Ray's and Winston's streams stopped, but there was no flash of white and no sound of a trap. Dingy sunlight flooded the building again. Winston muttered an inaudible deprecation in the direction of the ceiling, as Egon's meter went from whining back to chirping.

"It's gone back into hiding," Ray reported. "And I don't think we can flush it out from down here; we'll have to find a away to get up into the rafters. Is Peter okay?"

Peter retrieved his thrower. It was covered in a tarry-looking substance, stickier than most ectoplasm but still slick, as were his hands and his uniform. "Ugh." He holstered his thrower and raised his hands to his hair. Sure enough, it was coated, too. "Well, my vanity has just taken a fatal blow. And I bruised up my hip when it threw me. Other than that, I think I'm okay."

"What in the heck was it talking about? The other what?" Winston helped Peter to his feet.

Egon waved his PKE meter. "I think I have an idea. Remember this morning, I detected significant residuals on Mr. Schmetterling?"

"Right." Peter wobbled and leaned on Egon's elbow for support. "Same as our bad guy here, I take it?"

"Actually, no." Egon turned the side knob on the meter and displayed two sets of residuals on top of each other. They failed to match at all. "A distinctly different entity. There are at least two fairly powerful spirits in Carter Lake."

Peter made a face. "Well, until someone calls us about the other one, this is the only one we're getting paid to bust." He looked up into the rafters; nothing looked unusual. "But we need to come up with a plan, and I'd like to get this stuff out of my hair. Let's go, guys; we'll come back when we know what we're doing."

"I'm bringing this along." Ray picked up the maul handle. "We might be able to get some clearer readings off of it away from the shadow."

A faint chuckle rang out of the corners of the warehouse as they closed and locked the door behind them.

\---

Peter stalked out of the bathroom in his sweatpants, a towel knotted around his head. "I just want to say," he announced to no one in particular, "that I would really appreciate it if that didn't ever happen again."

"No kidding," snorted Winston as he unpacked his suitcase. "I'm glad we have extra tarps. I'd rather not be stuck cleaning that stuff out of Ecto."

Peter glanced around. "Speaking of tarps, where's my uniform?" He unwound the towel gingerly, as if his scalp were sensitive. A wisp of water vapor steamed from his damp hair.

"Ray and Egon said they were scraping a sample off of it." The oldest member of the team jabbed a thumb in the direction of the stairs. "I'd guess they still have it."

"Let's hope it's still in one piece. I only brought two." Peter tugged on a blue-and-white sweatshirt, stepped into a pair of deck shoes, and padded off down the hall.

Egon and Ray had taken over Mrs. Martinez's kitchen. Peter's uniform was draped over the back of a metal chair, a pool of water forming beneath it as it dripped. The two scientists hunched over a small glass dish on the counter, half-filled with more of the tarry substance that had recently clung to Peter's scalp. Ray had the ecto-scopes on, and was adjusting one eyepiece. Egon was preparing a slide for a conventional microscope; Peter wondered briefly whether the physicist had brought it with them, or found it here at the B&amp;B somewhere.

"Nice of you to clean my suit. Is it drip-dry?" he asked, shuffling up behind them.

Egon offered him the other chair with one hand. "We ended up having to rinse it in boiling water to get the last traces of the ectoplasm off," Spengler told him without looking up. "Since they're 65% polyester, it shouldn't have shrunk, but we didn't want to potentially compound that problem with the heat from the dryer."

"Mrs. Martinez thought she had some clothespins somewhere," Ray added. "Egon, the only thing I'm getting from this sample is that it's not drying out nearly as fast as normal ectoplasm. It doesn't seem to be reacting with the air at the usual pace. But once it does dry, it sublimates almost immediately."

"And there's no obvious reason?" Egon placed the glass slide precisely on the microscope's stage, and began adjusting the focus knobs.

"Other than its greater-than-usual density, not that I can see." The engineer pushed the ecto-scopes back up onto his forehead and leaned against the counter. "It reads like the usual Class Six physical residues, except for being unusually thick and sticky. Did you get it all off okay, Peter?"

The team psychologist turned the chair around so he could rest his arms and chin on the back, straddling the seat. "I think so. Do you see any spots I missed? 'Cause I really don't want to go out in public with that stuff on me. Your garden-variety slime is bad enough."

Ray circled Peter's chair, peering at him. Then he dropped the scopes back into place and repeated the motion. "Nope, you're clean." The engineer removed the goggles completely and wiped his forehead. "Man, it's humid in here. Looks like you got it all; did you leave any shampoo for the rest of us?"

"Brought my own." Peter caught Egon's smirk out of the corner of his eye. "Hey, this happens to me a lot, you know. Some shampoos don't handle slime well. I figured there was a pretty good chance I'd need one that did. Besides," he said, turning accusing eyes at the physicist, "I'm not the only one who travels with hair product."

"I wasn't mocking your preparedness, Peter," chided the taller man. "Only your vanity." Egon waved Ray over. "Take a look at this and tell me what you think."

"Huh." Ray looked up from the microscope with a puzzled expression. "That's really weird. That shouldn't even be stable, should it?"

"You guys gonna clue me in, here?" Peter asked, lifting his head and looking sideways at the instrument.

"It appears to be a combination of normal Class Six ectoplasm, very dark in color, and what I can only describe as fibers of insubstantial energy, probably PKE-based but possibly quasi-elemental in nature." Egon removed his glasses to squint through the eyepiece, adjusting the fine-focus knob.

Peter looked at Ray, who shrugged. "That's pretty much how I'd describe it, too, Peter. Black slime holding together little microscopic strings of . . . I don't know what it is, but it absorbs light and it's not there when you poke at it."

"Not there?" Ray's description had used smaller words, but Peter was no closer to understanding than he had been.

"Perhaps you'd better see for yourself." Egon stepped back and replaced his glasses. Peter climbed out of his chair and ambled over, closing his left eye and peering through the microscope's lens.

It looked like strands of the darkest smoke Peter had ever seen, embedded in thick black sludge.

"Okay," he said, straightening back up. "Egon, you said it was 'quasi-elemental.' Care to unpack that for me?"

"As you know, Peter, there are 109 physical elements that make up normal matter. Ectoplasm isn't technically made of any of them; the particles that make up a ghost's physical manifestation are virtual particles that eventually decay after long exposure to normal matter. That's why ectoplasm will eventually appear to dry out and then sublimate if it's not cleaned up; the virtual particles are decaying into smaller, mostly-undetectable ones that make up the natural PKE field." Egon had dropped into lecture mode, gesturing with his fingers to indicate the virtual particles leaving the ectoplasm. "However, the energies that give structure to the ectoplasmic particle set come in a specific set of types that roughly match the old philosophical idea of the natural elements. Class Eight and Class Nine spirits are often aligned with a particular philosophical element, as are lesser spirits on occasion. We've seen water elementals before, for instance."

"I remember." Peter's mouth curved downward; Nyxa had swallowed the rest of the team, and he'd had to resort to the tinkering he'd picked up from hanging around Ray and Egon for over a decade to rescue them alone. "And the Phantom wasn't a fire elemental, exactly, but he was aligned with fire as an element, right?"

"Precisely. There are a number of things that are not, in and of themselves, elements in the same sense," Egon continued, "but can be thought of as being _like_ the philosophical elements for purposes of spirit classification. Plants, for instance."

"Although wood _is_ an element in the Chinese classification," Ray noted.

Egon glanced at Ray over his glasses at the interruption, but went on. "Or animals, or even technology. In this particular case, I suspect that what we have is a spirit aligned with darkness as if it were an element."

"On, in other words, a darkness quasi-elemental," Ray finished up. "Which would explain how it disappeared into the shadows. It can treat any lack of light as if it were part of its own body, if what Egon and I are speculating is true."

Peter thought about that. "So does that mean that light will eventually dissolve it, and that's why it evaporated off of Colewood and his shirt?"

"That seems likely," nodded Egon. Ray obviously hadn't even thought about it; he put one finger to his jaw, and then peered through the microscope again. Egon looked upwards, calculating, and added, "The fibers of quasi-elemental darkness would be slowly dissipated by exposure to light, and the remaining ectoplasm would be more fragile than usual due to the network of holes left in it."

Ray looked up from the scope and was about to say something when he was interrupted by a crash outside the kitchen window, followed by a series of shouts. Peter was out the door before the second shout died away; Egon and Ray were hot on his heels.

Mrs. Martinez was sitting on the ground about half a block away, and a garbage can had been over turned next to her. A few feet away, a half-dozen kids - and they really were kids; the oldest couldn't have been more than fifteen, and the youngest looked like he was still in elementary school - threatened her with a combination of dirt clods, rotten fruit, and sticks. As the three Ghostbusters charged down the alleyway, another volley of debris arced towards her from the gang.

"Hey, you cut that out!" shouted Ray. Behind them, the door to the B&amp;B banged again. The tallest of the boys, a dark-haired, wiry teen, registered their presence, dropped the stick he was holding, and wheeled around to flee.

Peter picked up speed. "Oh, no, you don't!" The rest of the kids similarly ditched their improvised weapons and took off after their leader. Oddly, except for one of them, a scrawny boy with a baggy sweatshirt and his baseball cap on backwards, none of them looked frightened or even surprised.

The gang split in two as they reached the other end of the alleyway. Peter heard Ray stop to help Mrs. Martinez back up. "Egon, you go left; I'll break right," Peter called back, and peeled off as he hit the sidewalk.

The kids were already out of sight. That was puzzling; that shouldn't be possible, unless they were all near-Olympic-level athletes. Peter kept running, looking for another alleyway they could turn down, with no luck.

As he leaned against the wall of a hardware store to catch his breath, Winston jogged up next to him. "Hey, did you see 'em? Egon lost his group, and I couldn't catch up."

"Nope. Mine seemed to vanish into thin air as soon as they made the turn." Peter wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "Didn't seem like they were running that fast when they turned tail, but I guess they picked up speed."

They returned to the bed and breakfast at a slow amble, looking for any other evidence of the kids' passage. "Man, I don't even see any footprints," Winston complained as they returned to the alley.

"Nor do I," answered Egon, who was inspecting the debris the kids had dropped. "Not even when they tracked through the refuse they spilled." He gestured at the pile of rubbish on the ground; there were several foot-shaped depressions where it had been stepped in, but no evidence that those feet had fallen anywhere else.

Peter inspected the prints of the shoes preserved in the garbage. "Huh. Pretty generic sneakers, too - no logo marks or anything."

Egon reached into his pocket and pulled out the PKE meter. As he turned it on, the antennae flickered once.

"What does that mean?" asked Winston, looking around Egon's shoulder at the meter.

"Very faint residual readings. They weren't ghosts, but they might have been in contact with one." The physicist glanced up. "But it's also possible that there was a ghost in this alley at some point in the relatively recent past, unrelated to this event." He shook his head. "We should see if Mrs. Martinez recognized her assailants."

Ray had already taken her back into the dining room, and was fetching her a glass of water. She smiled as the others entered. "Thank you for running to my rescue. They've gotten terrible lately."

"No problem at all. Are you all right?" asked Winston, speaking for all of them.

Waving one hand, she assured them, "I'm fine. They didn't even try to snatch my purse; they just knocked me over and threw things." She brushed a clod of dirt off of her shoulder. "The eggs I went to buy are another matter," she added ruefully.

"We'll pick up some more, don't worry," Ray reassured her as he came back from the kitchen, glass in hand.

"Do you know them?" Peter asked casually, slipping into another chair.

"Some of them. They're local children, mostly in middle school." She took the water from Ray with a grateful murmur, and swallowed half of it in a couple of gulps. "The tall one, Horace, is sort of their figurehead - he's fourteen, going on fifteen, and the oldest. But the rest get up to trouble even without him. There's no real leader, as far as anyone can tell. Believe me, Sheriff Barkwell has tried to find the ringleader."

"That's awfully bold, knocking a woman over in broad daylight like that, isn't it?" Winston asked, taking another chair.

She shook her head. "No, actually, they don't generally go out in a group like that at night. Sometimes they get up to individual mischief, but they're much more likely to be caught." The rest of the water disappeared down her throat. "Somehow, they seem more likely to make their getaway in a group."

"Yeah, and they seemed to get faster when they split up, too." Peter saw Ray and Egon exchange a glance over Mrs. Martinez's head. He decided to ask them later. "We did pick up some faint readings back in the alley. Does this place have any history of being haunted?"

The innkeeper looked shocked. "No, never. The old silo is the only haunted place I know of in town."

"Then it's possible that the children are under some sort of supernatural influence," concluded Egon, his eyes hard. Winston looked up with much the same expression; the two of them took ghosts that preyed on children very personally.

"From the silo ghost?" asked their hostess.

Egon shook his head. "No. The readings are very different."

Peter raised one eyebrow. "How about the other set?"

The physicist turned a knob on the PKE meter. "See for yourself." He displayed the residuals from the alleyway to the ones he'd taken from Schmetterling that morning.

Adjusting for the different biorhythms also present in the readings, they matched.

"Well, I think we might have our 'other,' anyway," Ray remarked brightly.

\---

"I feel dumb with this thing on," Peter grumbled. He reached up and adjusted the strap that kept the huge lamp balanced on his head. The night sky overhead was much too full of stars for his taste.

Winston flashed him a sympathetic grin. "Hey, if it keeps that muck off of you . . . "

"Fair enough." They nudged the back door of the warehouse open, throwers already in hand. So far the place was quiet. "I also think leaving both the bookworms together was not one of our best moves."

"No, I agree with you on that." The oldest Ghostbuster eased through the doorway and dropped his voice to a whisper. "But Ray insisted, and you know how arguing with him goes when he gets on a tear like that."

"Mm-hmm." Peter followed through the door and fell into step behind Winston as the two of them crept beneath the loft towards the open floor. For once, he was holding a PKE meter, although both the sound and the indicator lights were off; only the screen gave any indication that it was picking anything up. It registered a single Class Six, somewhere above them, but too nebulous to locate. Bits of it kept moving, as if it were dissolved in the air like ink in water.

A hollow voice rang in their ears. "If you think you can hide from me in the dark, your intelligence is less than I had thought."

"Hit it!" shouted Peter, flicking the switch under his chin. A searing beam of brilliant light flashed into the gloom around them, followed almost instantly by Winston's; the echoing chuckle turned into a sharp howl, and they felt something pull away from them.

Venkman's eyes fell to the meter. "It's headed up again!" he hollered into his radio, giving up any pretense of stealth and making a run for the main floor.

"I'm on it," replied Egon, and the lights for the whole building snapped on. Harsh, industrial, and long-neglected, they left pools of shadow across the building where bulbs had burned out or broken. The readings that represented the phantom collected in one of them, near what had once been a freight elevator shaft. "Over by the giant dumbwaiter," Peter informed the team, cornering at the open stairway and heading upwards, Winston at his heels.

"Try and flush him out into the open. Make him take one of the shadows that doesn't have cover," Ray insisted over the radio. "We'll have him cornered before - "  
The phantom solidified, a manta-like shape in a dim corner. It took a swipe at Winston; he yelped and dodged as Peter aimed his headlamp at it. It recoiled from the light and headed upwards again, into the shadows of the rafters. "Why do you follow me? What harm do I do your kind?"

"Well, you're making this place damned hard to rent or renovate," Peter pointed out, his beam scanning the ceiling.

The noise that followed might have been a snort. "Money. Such a petty motivation. Almost as trivial as the Other's."

Winston frowned. "So since we're having this conversation anyway, do you know what the deal is with the kids?"

The dancing shadows chuckled dryly. "They belong to the Other, or at least, the Other thinks they belong."

Winston's beam chased the dimness from behind an exposed strut. "They're possessed?"

"They are possessions." The location of the voice shifted from one long rafter to another without passing through the space in between. "They are owned. Not as puppets; as trophies." Another laugh rang the dusty roof. "The Other had only adults and wanted children. Chase that one, not me."

"You're not exactly helping your case by letting us know you knew about this and didn't do anything," Winston pointed out, his beam skirting the edge of a pool of shadows.

"Did I say I spoke not? Who would hear me?" the hollow voice asked, and then faded.

"Hey, you're a pretty powerful specter; I bet you could get most anyone's attention if you tried," Peter offered, his beam tracing the perimeter of the same puddle of darkness.

There was no reply; instead, the darkness condensed, solidified, and hurtled towards Winston as if it were falling. Peter's spotlight skittered over it, and he clicked the radio button twice with one hand as the other hit the power switch on his thrower. Winston turned, unsurprised but still caught off-guard, towards the approaching mass of shadows, his own headlamp just off-center; he fumbled with his thrower.

A beam of light nearly as bright as day split the shadows of the rafters and pinned the phantom just before it hit Winston. It hissed like water hitting hot metal, its wings flapping wildly. "Gotcha!" cheered Ray, as Egon came off the last step on the stairway and wheeled both his headlamp and his thrower towards the flailing specter. "Ray, you're directly on target; keep it on," Egon called into his radio as he hit his own power switch. "As long as Ecto's battery holds out!" Ray's voice crackled back.

"Night night," crowed Peter, firing. Winston's proton beam and Egon's joined his as the phantom writhed, still hissing. It flailed and tried to fling itself out of the spotlight, but the proton streams were holding it, and the light seemed to be weakening it.

No, it was _eroding_ it. Droplets of its ectoplasmic substance were being torn off by the light beam and evaporating; the hissing noise was its own substance being boiled off. Peter's expression shifted from pride to horror as he realized that it wasn't just trying to escape their throwers; it was writhing in _pain_. He grabbed a trap and threw it, cutting his thrower. "Trap out," he called, unnecessarily; Winston and Egon had both seen it and changed their grips. He stomped the pedal as soon as it stopped rolling; the phantom dove frantically for the pyramid of white light, normally so bright, but dimmer than Ray's spotlight. The trap snapped shut over it.

"Wow, that was great!" Ray's voice crackled from the radio speakers. Peter snapped off his headlamp and glanced at Egon. He'd noticed; he was paler than usual, and frowning. Winston turned cautiously towards them both in turn. "That may have been overkill," he mused, looking at the atomized spray of tarry ectoplasm that coated the rafter beside them; Peter and Egon both nodded.

Peter scooped up the blinking trap. "Well, gentlemen, let's get Ray's not-a-laser off of Ecto and head back into town. We'll present our client with the bill tomorrow, and then we're outta this dinky town." Ray cheered from somewhere out on the warehouse floor, and the other three headed back towards the stairway, carefully steering around the dark ectoplasmic splatter.

\---

Peter was drying off his hair again. "I have to say, the towels here are great," he said, smirking. The second shower of the day always felt like a luxury, no matter how badly he needed it, and this time he hadn't gotten too badly slimed.

"There any hot water left?" Winston had gotten swiped in the phantom's initial rush, but only his uniform had been gooped. Ray and Egon had already showered; Egon was now in his nightshirt, and Ray had changed into a pair of blue striped pajamas while Peter was occupying the bathroom. Winston was still in jeans and t-shirt.

"A little. You might want to -" Peter was interrupted by a harsh electronic warble. Ray leaped to his feet and bolted for the door; Winston sped after him. Egon followed, having stopped to find his slippers first; Peter followed behind him, boxer-clad and barefoot. "Is that Ray's new alarm for Ecto?" he asked the back of Egon's head.

"Yes, he just installed it a few weeks ago after -" Egon broke off as he saw the source of Ecto's distress. A small crowd of children, the same ones that had been pursuing Mrs. Martinez earlier, were fleeing the flashing light and whooping siren. Ray arrived at Ecto and began checking her for damage. Winston stopped next to him and waved a fist. "Go on, get out of here! You kids keep away from Ecto!"

"Unh-uh," Petter muttered, dashing around Egon, "You're not getting away that easily!" He flung himself at the last child to flee, a scrawny boy in a sweatshirt too big for him. The kid made the mistake of trying to zig-zag; Peter's old football instincts were good, and he dove for the kid's legs, catching him as he fell over. Egon caught up just as Peter and the kid landed on the lawn, with Ray a few steps behind. The kid's hands went up as his baseball cap went flying -

Ray gasped out loud, his eyes suddenly saucer-wide. Egon made no sound, but his eyebrows headed skyward as his jaw went the other way. "What?" Peter gulped, before turning to the kid.

He looked straight into bright green eyes, as a familiar forelock tumbled from where the cap had hid it into the boy's long face. For an instant, Peter was disoriented, remembering half-a-dozen mirrors from childhood.

The boy took advantage of Peter's discombobulation to squirm out of his grip. "Let _go_ of me!" He glanced around frantically, once, and then took off again, dodging behind the hedge. Winston's feet pounded after him.

"Holy crap, what was that?" Peter asked, more in wonder than in anger.

"Wow, Peter, did you see his hair?" breathed Ray. Egon's mouth turned thoughtful, and he reached into his nightshirt's lone pocket.

Winston returned. "Dammit, I lost him again. What happened, Pete? Why did you let him go?"

"I thought I saw . . . " Peter trailed off. Egon had fished out his PKE meter and was aiming it at something in the grass. Peter rolled to a crouch and looked over; it was the kid's baseball cap.

"Winston, he looked just like Peter," Ray explained. "Well, not exactly like him, but close enough to be his younger brother."

"Not the most likely relationship, Ray," Egon commented, carefully picking up the cap and running the meter over it again.

Peter rubbed one hand down the length of his face. He didn't want to think about that yet. "Getting anything, Spengs?"

Egon nodded. "Residual electrometabolic readings."

"And?" Peter was sure he didn't want to hear the answer.

Egon's expression was flat. "Approximately a 50% correlation with yours."

"Shit." Peter stood up and leaned against the wall, his head swimming.

"That _is_ close enough for brothers," Winston observed carefully.

The shoe finally dropped for Ray. "Or for - oh, _Peter._"

Venkman ran the other hand through his damp hair. "Uh, guys, we may have to stay here an extra day." He blew a slow breath between his teeth. "I think I owe an ex of mine a visit."

\---

Ecto-1 pulled up in front of a two-story house with a yard full of weeds, peeling white paint, and faded green trim. The car parked in the gravel driveway was ten years old, but clean and well-kept, Winston noticed. The wicker furniture on the porch, on the other hand, had suffered the depredations of wind, weather, and neighborhood cats.

Peter sagged bonelessly in the passenger's seat. "Oh, man." He clung to the door handle for a long moment before steeling himself and swinging it open. The baseball cap dangled loosely in the other hand.

Ray leaned towards Egon in the back seat. "Could this be a mistake? I mean, couldn't the kid be Charlie's, and really be Peter's brother after all?"

"Half-brother," Egon corrected automatically. "It's within the realm of possibility, but highly unlikely. First, assuming that the electrometabolic biorhythm readings I picked up are accurate, 50% is the maximum possible match between two half-siblings; one would expect closer to 25% on average. Secondly, while it would explain the hair, Peter gets his eyes from his mother."

"That's right," sighed Ray. "I remember. Hers were lighter green, but . . . " He trailed off as Peter steeled himself and began marching determinedly towards the door. "If we're going to be backing him up, I guess we should follow him, huh?"

Winston shrugged as he unlocked his door. "I dunno. Having an ex who left you high and dry with a kid show up suddenly on your porch one day with three of his best friends strikes me as a little bit threatening, you know?"

"Undoubtedly. Perhaps we should wait at the car until we know whether or not we're welcome." Egon unlatched his seatbelt, but didn't open his door.

Peter turned around halfway between the car and the front steps, his face carefully blank. He shifted his head to the side, his eyes questioning, as he looked back at Ecto.

"He needs at least one of us. I'll go," Ray decided, and slid off the bench seat, his boots crunching on the gravel. He jogged to Peter's side, as the psychologist's shoulders lifted slightly.

"Thanks," Peter whispered, resuming his trudge towards the door.

"Any time," Ray shrugged. The steps creaked under their weight, shedding flakes of green paint.

Peter's eyes were heavy. "It's been a long time."

"I'm surprised she still lives in the same house," Ray murmured as Peter's finger found the doorbell, hesitated, then stabbed at the button as if he were afraid it would bite him.

"I'm not." Peter sighed. "Single mom, Dad's health wasn't great even when she was a teenager, small town - not many other choices." Footsteps rang from somewhere in the house.

An elderly woman yanked the door open. "We don't want any - oh. _You._" Her eyes narrowed in recognition as she met Peter's gaze. "Wait right here. Don't you move an inch." She closed the door again, and shouted something they couldn't hear.

"Wouldn't think of it," Peter muttered, swaying slightly.

Ray put a hand on his friend's shoulder to steady him. "Is that Alicia's mom?"

"Yup." Peter leaned into Ray's support slightly. "Now we find out whether she's gone to get her dad and a twelve-gauge."

"You don't really think -" Ray started, but he was interrupted by the door being yanked open again. A woman in her early 30s stared out at them.

"Pete?" she asked. A flurry of emotions passed over her face - disbelief, fear, remembered joy, sorrow.

"Alicia, hey. Yeah, it's me." Peter couldn't meet her eyes.

She was a little shorter than Ray, with honey-blond hair pulled straight back into a ponytail that reached just between her shoulder blades. Her facial features had been conventionally beautiful once; age and time had weathered them slightly into something that would never make it on a New York runway, but spoke of character and hard-earned wisdom. Her frame was athletic, with the traces of baby-weight that had never quite gone away and the roughened hands of someone who did regular farm-work.

She laughed nervously. "I heard you guys were in town. You're famous now, huh. Didn't think you'd come looking up an old two-week flame, though."

"Well, I -" Peter coughed and looked aside. Finally, he met her gaze and wordlessly handed her the baseball cap. Her eyebrows rose in surprise, then fell into resignation.

"Oh. You've met Simon, then." She took the cap from him and turned it around in her hands. She thought for a long moment, then straightened her shoulders. "You'd better come in. You and your friends, too. You're into weird stuff; maybe you can help me make sense of things."

"Alicia, I didn't know, I swear." The words tumbled from Peter's mouth like water over a flooded dam. "If I'd known, I'd have - why didn't you -"

She held up both hands. "Because I didn't know there was anything to tell you until too late to track you down. I'm still not sure there is. I don't - this is Dr. Stantz, right? I've seen you on TV," she added by way of unnecessary explanation as Ray finished waving the others over. "And that's Dr. Spengler and Mr. Zeddemore?"

"Yup, that's us," Ray agreed. "Please call me Ray, though. Glad to meet you, Ms. Wilson, although I wish it were under better circumstances."

"Likewise," Egon nodded as he joined them. Alicia shook hands with them as they crowded onto the porch, forming a ragged arc around Peter.

"Didn't know there was - oh," Peter rubbed at his temples with the fingers of one hand. "So there was some question about paternity?"

She shook her head. "There's no question about Simon's paternity at all. That's the problem." Peter felt, rather than saw, Winston's flinch at the name. "Please, come on in. Mother's making lemonade, and there's plenty of room in the den. I'll start from the beginning."

The four men filed in and followed her into the front room, settling into an old and faded sectional sofa while she took a threadbare easy chair. The elderly woman who had first answered the door marched in and set a large plastic pitcher on the table, followed by six matching tumblers. Alicia poured herself a glass while her mother hovered by the entryway, and waited until everyone had served themselves before beginning.

"I don't know how much Pete told the rest of you about our relationship," she started, staring at her hands. "Probably not much, given how short it was." She glanced up at Ray; he nodded. "It was the summer of 1974, the end of June. I was just about to turn eighteen; I'd graduated from high school, and we didn't have the money to send me to college. I wasn't sure I wanted to go, anyway. I had a part-time job with the drugstore, doing shelf stocking, and Daddy's heart condition was keeping him from doing everything that needed to get done here, so I was helping him out a lot. Then the carnival came to town and set up on the fairgrounds just down the street."

She sighed. "It's hard to explain how dull things were here, and how much more dull being a teenager with big dreams made it seem. Pete was like no one I'd ever met. And he was honest with me; he told me he'd be leaving when the fair did, no matter what. He was romantic," she added, blushing and making Winston raise an eyebrow at Peter, "and to me he represented freedom and sophistication and everything else I couldn't have here. It's fair to say I fell for him hard. And then, when the time came when I knew he was going to be leaving, I turned into a jealous bitch so that I'd be the one doing the breaking up."

Egon glanced at Peter, who explained, "Remember, it was the '70s. Things were still kind of wild back then, and I was young, and we both knew this wasn't a forever kind of thing. About four days before the fair was scheduled to pack up, another girl - god, I don't even remember her name - kind of threw herself at me. She was hotter than hell and didn't want anything from me, just offered to, uh, suck me off. Her words, not mine." He blushed slightly, as did Egon. "If she'd offered actual sex - no, I know, Ray, but I was a teenager at the time - then I think I would have flinched and said no. That would have felt like I was cheating on Alicia, even though we never made any promises. But a blow job I talked myself into believing was okay." He looked up. "I really am sorry about that, by the way. I was a total dick, and even allowing for my being a dumb kid at the time, there's no excuse."

"No, really, it's okay," Alicia assured him. "Like I said, I knew that we weren't going to get to be together forever. Deep down, I even knew that there was no way you would want that, even if it were possible." She took a deep breath and another sip of her lemonade. "And it let me be the one in control of that. It mean that I could be angry at you, could be the one to cut things off, instead of being the girlfriend left behind when you moved on. But I was - I'd really fallen hard for you, Pete. Not just with you; with everything you represented for me. I made you much more than human, in my mind."

"You broke her heart, is what she's trying to say here," grumbled her mother from the kitchen chair she'd pulled up into the corner. "The rest of that summer, she was a moping, crying mess."

Alicia nodded. "I really was. Between that, and Daddy's failing health, I was a wreck. That's how Ian happened."

"Ian? I thought the kid's name was Simon," Winston interjected.

"He is. Ian Brodie was the boyfriend I almost married the next year." Alicia stood up, took a photo album down from a shelf, and set it on the coffee table. "Here, there's a photo of him from around October of that year." The photo showed a teenaged Alicia, thinner and blander, with her arm around a tall, dark-haired fellow with hooded blue eyes and a long face who looked to be in his early twenties.

Egon squinted. Alicia didn't look pregnant in the photo. He shot a sidelong glance at Ray; the engineer returned the look, and raised his eyebrows. He'd noticed, too.

"Ian showed up at the drugstore around the middle of August and started hanging around. The quilting club held a dance on Labor Day, and I mentioned to him that I didn't have anyone to go with. He said he didn't have anyone either, and he asked me if I wanted to go with him. I don't even remember anymore which of us actually decided that we were a couple; it just sort of happened." She turned the page; there were several more photos of her and Ian, mostly in her yard. "He didn't pressure me for sex, and I still couldn't imagine doing that with anyone but you, Pete. We did a lot of kissing and cuddling, and I could tell he wanted it, but he never asked. I think Daddy liked him for that. He helped out around the place when Daddy got really sick right before Thanksgiving." She pointed at one photo, where Ian was slicing a pumpkin pie. "He said his family was out on Long Island, and he didn't feel like hitchhiking home, so he stayed with us. It was . . . nice."

Peter was looking at her in the photos with a puzzled expression. She noticed, and pressed onward. "It was right after that that he finally sweet-talked me into bed. It was - I still don't know how he did it. Up until that point, I just hadn't been attracted to him like that, and then it was like I was on fire for him. It became an insanely passionate relationship. Some nights we literally didn't sleep, and I didn't care. And, unlike Pete, Ian wasn't into being careful." She cleared her throat. "So it really wasn't a surprise when my monthly visitor didn't arrive in January."

Peter sat back. "Wait, you didn't get pregnant until then?"

She nodded. "Simon was born on September 30, 1975." She flipped forward a couple of pages, to her and a dark-haired newborn in a hospital bed.

"But he doesn't look anything like that guy." Peter was right; Ian's features were only vaguely similar to Simon's.

"We didn't know that at the time. And Ian had been so sweet - he'd promised he'd marry me. He'd actually offered to when we discovered I was really pregnant, but I think that was just because he was afraid Daddy would shoot him if he didn't. But we agreed that once I was out of the hospital, we'd get the Methodist minister to do a quick ceremony for us." She scowled, forming deep and familiar lines on her forehead.

"So what happened to him?" Ray prompted.

She leaned back in the chair. "We don't know. He visited me twice in the hospital, and he was so excited - he loved Simon on sight, would hold him and sing to him. But when I got out and came home, he was nowhere to be found. I went to the apartment he'd been sharing with one of the silo workers, and the guy said he moved out two days before with no warning. He'd vanished completely - there weren't that many places in town he could have stayed, and he wasn't at any of them."

She turned another page. An envelope had been taped to the paper. "Then he sent this, along with fifty dollars." She unfolded the single sheet of paper and read it: " 'Dear Leecie -' that was his nickname for me - 'I am sorry I left so suddenly. I realized, holding our darling boy, that I could not be the father he needed on the tiny wages I was earning, so I have set out to find a better job. I will send money from whatever job I'm working, and when I find one that can truly support a family, I'll write for you and Simon to join me. Here's the first payment. Love, Ian.' " She slid the letter back into the envelope; it was postmarked from Syracuse. "I got those with essentially the same letter about every couple of months for the next three years, until I finally wrote him back and told him off. I said that he needed to either be here for me and Simon, or get out of our lives completely. He seems to have taken the latter option." Her scowl deepened. "And the stress of it all, of not knowing where he was or what his intentions were, and the noise and mess of a new baby and then a hellacious toddler - none of it was good for Daddy. He died about when Simon turned four."

"I'm so sorry," Peter whispered. Her mother harrumphed in the background.

"Thanks," she murmured. "Anyway, a little after Daddy died, I married one of my high school sweethearts, a guy named Morris. That lasted for about five years. Only good thing to come out of that relationship was - "

"Me," interrupted a voice from the entryway. "Mommy, are these the men from the television?"

"Yes, they are. Come and say hi to the Ghostbusters, Laura." Alicia gestured the little girl over. She looked about seven, with short brown hair and thick glasses. She stared at each of them for a few seconds, lingering at Peter. "You're Simon's real daddy, aren't you," she said. It didn't sound like a question.

"Well, it sounds like I can't be," he answered. "I knew your mother too early to be his daddy."

"Hmm. Well, you _smell_ like him," Laura commented, and then wandered over to a child-sized rocking chair in the corner, sitting down and picking up a weathered copy of _The Wizard of Oz_. Egon made a short "hmm" sound.

Alicia continued, "After the divorce, I moved back in with Mom. Simon and Morris had never really gotten along, but ever since then, he's been acting - strange. He's joined up with - well, Carter Lake really isn't big enough to have street gangs, but they steal things from people's yards, they draw graffiti in the school bathrooms, that sort of thing. And in the past few months," she added, her eyes dropping, "they've started hassling people physically. Usually women, but not always."

"Have you spoken with Simon about that?" Egon asked.

"Oh, I've forbidden him to hang out with any of the rest of them, but he sneaks out and does it anyway." She shook her head. "I can't lock him in his room. I work during the day, and Mother can't be there to keep an eye on him every single minute. And he's gotten very, very good at getting out even when we're both looking for him. Some days, I wonder if he doesn't climb out the window somehow. Punishing him doesn't seem to work; it makes him more likely to try to sneak out. I don't know what to do."

"The woman in the red cape puts them up to it," commented Laura, looking up from her book.

"What woman in the red cape?" asked Ray, turning around in his chair.

Alicia scowled. "The kids in the gang have a symbol that they leave in their graffiti. It's a naked woman, well, she's naked except for high-heeled shoes and a cape. Very stylized, with huge breasts." She got up and headed towards the hallway. "I probably have one of Simon's drawings."

"And what do you know about her?" Ray asked the little girl.

Laura met his gaze and thought for a moment, as if she were deciding whether she could trust him. "She's angry at the rest of us for not being hers." She sucked at her finger for a second, then added, "And she's afraid of the dark."

"Laura, stop repeating Simon's stories; they're not true," Alicia scolded as she returned to her chair. She flattened a crumpled sheet of notebook paper against the coffee table. On it, in red ballpoint, was a sketch of a naked woman with round hips and breasts larger than her head. Her hands were raised high, and her feet were pointed. A rippling cape draped from her shoulders to her waist, and long hair flowed over her shoulders. Her eyes and mouth were only suggestions, flickers of ink where her facial features would be.

Egon picked it up and peered at it. "And they leave this exact drawing at the scene of their crimes?"

"Something close to it. That has a little more detail than the average one." Alicia looked worried.

"Has Simon told you anything about who this represents?" Ray wondered aloud.

"He did, a little, when he first started running around with Horace," she answered. "He said she was Horace's real mother, which was silly - Horace's mother is the principal of the elementary school, and he's not adopted. Then he said she was their fairy godmother for a little while. Then he admitted that she wasn't real, that she was just something Horace dreamed up."

"You getting anything off of that, Egon?" Peter asked suddenly. Egon looked sheepish, then removed the PKE meter he'd been fiddling with from his pocket. The antennae didn't move, but something flickered on the screen. "Possibly, but if so it's been too long to get a real reading."

Alicia looked at the device with a combination of skepticism and hope. "You mean, there's something supernatural about it?"

"Potentially." Egon looked concerned. "May we please see Simon's room?"

"Certainly," Alicia agreed, pushing herself out of the chair and heading back into the hallway. They climbed the stairs single-file; she pushed open the door to a small room just off the landing.

It looked like a typical thirteen-year-old boy's room: clothing scattered everywhere, a few tattered posters of baseball players tacked to the walls, the toys of childhood tossed in the corners. Scraps of paper tumbled off a small desk shoved crookedly against one wall. The bed was unmade, the sheets dirty. Egon aimed the meter around the room; the antennae stirred gently, once, twice.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, ma'am," Egon announced, "but it appears that this room has been visited at some point in the recent past by a Class Seven entity."

"Oh, no," Alicia moaned. "What does that mean?"

"It means that a supernatural entity - a fairly powerful one - seems to have shown an interest in your son." Egon adjusted his glasses and continued, "I am not sure I am ready to conclude that his resemblance to Peter is coincidental, either."

"For a while, I wondered if that was me," Alicia admitted. "If somehow my wishing that Simon _had_ been Pete's son instead of Ian's made him turn out looking like Pete. But I know that's silly."

"Simon's electrometabolic readings are a 50% match for Peter," Egon explained. He twiddled three knobs on the meter and aimed it at her. "And a 50% match for you as well. That's what I'd expect for a child and his parents."

"But Simon can't be Pete's," she argued. "By the time he was conceived, we'd been apart for almost six months."

"I was in Brooklyn at the time, and I can prove it," added Peter.

Egon shook his head. "I can't explain it yet. Perhaps Ian and Peter somehow have identical electrometabolic frequencies, although that's supposed to be impossible. Even identical twins have slightly different readings. But even if Peter isn't Simon's biological father, there appears to be some connection."

"So what do we do now?" asked Ray.

Peter straightened his shoulders and looked determined. "First, we visit our client and present the bill. Second, we find out if there's anything on this Ian Brodie guy. And third, we start looking for the Lady in Red."

"I haven't offered to hire you yet," Alicia pointed out. "I'm not sure I could pay your fee."

Peter shook his head. "It's personal, now. Consider it a gift from an old flame." He looked up at Egon. "Come on, big guy, we're going to need your library expertise."

\---

The Carter Lake Town Library wasn't even its own building; it took up the north wing of the drafty two-story edifice, while the east wing housed the local tourism center and the Better Business Bureau office. The librarian (and there was only one) was a short, portly lady in her early 60s, with iron-gray hair in a tight bun; she watched Egon and Winston like an oddly friendly hawk as they hunted through the microfilm archives of the local paper.

"Ah, yes, Ian," she clucked. "Shame about him. Seemed to blow in on one wind and then blow out again."

"So he wasn't a long-time resident?" Peter asked.

"Oh, no. He turned up at the seed warehouse late that summer; he'd been working at a farm in Pennsylvania until they were bought out and laid him off, he said. Hitchhiked up here with a trucker, I think." She shook her head. "Strange thing, really. For years, no one new ever came into town, just a tourist or two fishing out on the lake. Then in '73, we started getting hitchhikers staying for a month or so at a time, and then the floodgates broke the year after that."

"Yeah, someone mentioned that you hadn't had a carnival there in a decade or so when we came through in '74," Peter agreed. Egon jotted something down on his miniature notebook.

The librarian raised an eyebrow. "I _thought_ you looked familiar. You're the scamp that ran the ring-toss and broke poor Alicia Wilson's heart."

"Guilty, although in my defense, she didn't tell me." Peter was exaggerating, but his sheepishness was not completely feigned.

Winston raised an eyebrow. "You remember him?"

"It's not as hard as it looks, with Simon around." She looked at Peter appraisingly. "Well, that and I was fairly sure at the time he was cheating."

Peter blushed a little bit. "It was the '70s, and -"

"I meant at the ring toss game." A flicker of merriment flashed in the librarian's eyes.

"Well, yeah." Venkman shrugged. "It's a carny midway game. They're all rigged."

Ray frowned slightly. "What did you mean about Simon? I mean, we've already established that he's Ian's kid, not Peter's."

The librarian stared levelly at Ray. "Have you seen Simon?"

"Yeah."

"Do you really believe that, after meeting him?" She narrowed her eyes at Ray, then at Egon.

Peter broke in, "Seriously, I wasn't anywhere near her when she got pregnant with him."

She looked at Egon, not saying anything. Egon looked vaguely nervous and went back to the microfilm. Ray's eyes unfocused slightly as his attention turned inwards.

Peter looked at her and blinked, slowly. Finally, he asked "Do you know anything about the other kids in the - in Simon's gang?"

"A bit. None of them are in the same grade." She looked over her glasses. "The elementary school doesn't have its own library, so they come over to use the children's section upstairs once every three weeks. I get to meet almost all of the town's children that way, so I've at least been introduced to all of them. I wouldn't remember all their names." She ticked off children on her fingers. "Horace, Simon, Lynette, the Barker boy, Corey, Dina Carver's kid, and Margaret Patterson's girl."

"Mrs. Martinez mentioned Horace," Winston remembered aloud.

"He's the oldest, but he's probably not the ringleader." The librarian hunted through the more recent rolls of film. "Poor dear thing, Horace isn't all that bright. Simon would run rings around him, but I don't think he's their leader, either." She plucked a roll from its box and fed it into the reader. "Horace was in the paper last year for an FFA award."

"FFA?" Winston raised his eyebrows quizzically.

Ray chuckled. "Future Farmers of America. Trust me, it's big in small towns like this."

"Here," she gestured at the reader, "take a look."

Ray wandered over, glanced at the screen, and nearly did a double-take. "Wow, guys, look at this!" he called, gesturing broadly and almost knocking the empty microfilm box over. The others clustered around.

Peter was the first to speak. "Who are Horace's parents?"

"Lydia Doven, the principal of the elementary school, and her husband David." The librarian spun the reel on the reader to a different issue. "I think - there they are, at the school's Open House last fall."

Egon looked down at her sharply. "Anything else you'd like to tell us?"

She shrugged. "Suspicions of an old gossip. No one listens to a spinster who never caught a man, after all. Just - whispers in the dark."

"I'm listening." So were the others; four pairs of eyes were on her.

She smiled slightly. "You might find it interesting to interview Mary Barker, Dina Carver, and Margaret Patterson. Take a good look at their husbands when you do."

"We'll take it under consideration," mused Peter darkly.

\---

"Mrs. Doven will be right with you, Dr. Stantz." The school secretary - she had to be barely out of high school herself - gave him a smile he'd seen hundreds of times, although it was more often aimed at Peter or Egon. "It must be fascinating," she continued, folding her hands in front of her to display her freshly painted nails, "traveling all over the country to investigate ghosts. You must meet a lot of people." Her eyes shone with the delight of meeting a celebrity, if a minor one, and perhaps with a vicarious thrill at the thought of getting out of this town, of seeing more of the world, of being anyplace but here.

He empathized. He'd liked Morrisville, still did, but he'd itched to get out, to get back to the city that towered in his earliest memories - or, failing that, to flee to California - even before his parents had died. "Oh, yeah, I enjoy it a lot," he agreed, and watched her eyes glitter. "It's not glamorous, though - it can be pretty dirty work, and even dangerous."

She nodded. "Is it true that there are more ghosts in the Northeast than anywhere else in the country?"

Ah, she'd read the article in _Harper's_ from a few months ago. "So far, yeah, that appears to be true, but remember, there's really only us and the Bonewits-Zell group out in Silicon Valley doing much research on this. If there were mass hauntings in, say, Chicago or Dallas, there wouldn't necessarily have been anyone to catch it. And New Orleans is a known exception to the rule."

The phone on the secretary's desk buzzed. She gave it a disgusted look and picked it up. "Front office. Yes, Mrs. Doven, he's here. Certainly." She set the receiver back down carefully and pointed one long, frosted-pink nail towards the door behind her. "She's ready; you can go on in, Dr. Stantz."

Ray glanced at the nameplate on her desk. "Thanks, Miss Woodruff." She smiled and dimpled at being addressed by name as he crossed the small office and pushed the door open.

The walls of the school were cinderblocks coated with five or six layers of paint, the last one a soft cream color. Elsewhere in the building it was already flaking from the grabbing hands of dozens of children, showing the very pale salmon underneath, but in this little room it was pristine. Photos of prominent people - the current President, his predecessor, a former governor, three or four mayors - hung on the walls, and two potted palms framed the large walnut desk symmetrically. Mrs. Doven, a thin woman with graying hair and a permanent scowl, was seated behind it, looking at Ray with a combination of annoyance and interest. The desk held a phone, a calendar, and a solitary pen; it was otherwise completely clear.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Doven," he started. "I'm Dr. Raymond Stantz." He held out his right hand; she shook it without standing up. He looked around, found the only other chair in the room, and pulled it up. "I'm with the Ghostbusters."

"Yes, I've heard of you," she began warily. "Never put much stock in such things, myself, but if it improves the town's economy . . ." She shrugged.

He nodded. "Of course. Anyway, we were called out to take care of the local ghost, and we've discovered potential evidence of a second paranormal entity in town."

The scowl lines on her forehead deepened. "Not at my school, certainly."

He shrugged. "We've gotten anomalous readings at several places in town." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his PKE meter. "And we're trying to pinpoint the source. Or sources." He tugged out the antennae; the meter popped to life with an electronic warble. "I was hoping you'd give me permission to scan the school. I won't interrupt any classes," he assured her.

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the meter. "Precisely what is that thing? It's not dangerous, is it?"

"No, not at all," Ray protested. "It's just a detector. It can tell when there are elevated levels of psychokinetic energy in the vicinity - the stuff that holds ghosts together." The meter was reading something, so faint that it might be just background variation. He watched it with one eye as he continued, "Have you heard or seen anything that might indicate unusual activity? Maybe the kids, or even the teachers, have seen or heard something strange?"

"Of course not," she snapped. "This is a nice, normal community. There have been stories about the old silo - that's what Jerry called you out here for, isn't it? - for years, but everything else about our town is absolutely conventional."

The faint reading on the meter got closer. Ray was half-distracted. "So, nothing's changed about Carter Lake? No problems that you've never had before?"

"Nothing that requires a supernatural explanation," she bit out. Her face was starting to turn red. "You're welcome to scan the outside of the school with your - device - but I don't want any classes being disturbed, and I don't permit strangers into the classrooms without good reason." She rose to her feet. "Now, if you'll -"

A muffled shout sounded in the office behind them, followed by the banging of a door. "Wait, you can't -" called Miss Woodruff; the buzzer on the desk sounded a fraction of a second before the office door flew open.

"Mom, they're trying - " shouted a dark-haired, wiry youngster in the doorway. Behind him was a taller man in a rumpled suit and a coach's buzz-cut. "Mrs. Doven, I'm sorry, but Horace was fighting again. He's suspended for the rest of the day, and for tomorrow, too," the older man called out over the teenager's shoulder.

Ray looked at the screen. Residual Class Seven readings, very recent.

"It's a lie, I wasn't fighting, I just - she was - " Horace struggled for his voice and then fell silent.

Mrs. Doven's face was a crimson mass of anger and embarrassment. "Horace, this is not acceptable behavior. How many times have we talked about this?"

"I don't have to listen to you." Horace's dull face darkened.

"Yes, you do. Have a seat in the main office until you've cooled off. I'll be out there in a minute." She looked up at the other figure in the doorway. "Coach Currier, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. I'll take care of him. Who was he - "

"Cassie McKinney again." He cleared his throat as Horace crept around him and slunk back to the secretary's desk. In a much lower voice, he said "He was trying to grab her - chest. She slapped him, and he hauled off and punched her. The rest of the kids had mostly pulled them apart before I even got there."

"We'll talk." The principal's voice was a cold hiss.

"I've already given him a lecture about being a gentleman." The coach shook his head wearily. "Lydia, he's going to end up in jail before he's eighteen. We're going to have to find some way of getting through to him."

She closed her eyes tightly. "I know."

The coach glanced at Ray, shrugged a wordless apology for interrupting, and left, closing the door carefully behind him.

Ray turned back to Mrs. Doven. "How long has Horace been acting out?"

"That's none of your business," she snapped, her eyes flying open.

"Actually, it might be." He turned the screen so she could see it. A dim point still flickered on the screen. "I have some reason to believe your son is under some sort of supernatural influence."

For a moment, hope and even relief flashed across her face, and Ray realized with a start that she wasn't nearly as old as she looked. Then the shutters fell again. "I don't believe in such things, and if I did, I take him to church every Sunday - the Word of God would have driven off any demons by now."

"It doesn't quite work like that. There are lots of spirits that aren't demons," Ray explained. He didn't point out that even those spirits that fell into that classification weren't the devils of Christian myth and legend.

She folded her hands in front of her and stared balefully at him. "I think you ought to leave."

Ray sat back in the chair instead. "You know, I've seen a photo of Mr. Doven. Horace doesn't look much like his father, does he?"

"What are you implying?" she hissed, fingers suddenly white against her knuckles.

Ray shrugged. "In fact, if I were just guessing, I'd say I thought he looked more like Mr. Colewood."

She leaned against the desk, her eyes hard. "If you're suggesting that I had an affair with Jerry, that's ridiculous. I'm going to have to ask you to leave, now."

Ray stood very slowly. "What if I said maybe you did have an affair then, but I believed you that it wasn't with him?"

Anger turned into shock. "You can't know that."

"Maybe with someone who hitchhiked into town they year before the carnival arrived?" Ray watched her expression warring between offense, shame, outrage, and fear.

"Are you going to expose me? Try to get me fired?" Her voice was a whisper.

He shook his head. "No, ma'am, nothing like that. I'm just trying to get down to the bottom of things." He glanced at the residual reading on the screen. It wasn't fading. "Can you tell me anything about the Lady in Red?"

\---

Winston wasn't sure if he was amused or annoyed by this part of town literally being on the other side of the lone railroad track that crossed Carter Lake. The streets were clean, the houses small and missing occasional shingles but well-kept, the fences whitewashed - often with traces of graffiti underneath. He glanced at the address the librarian had given him, and then at the house number. A young girl of perhaps eight, her complexion the color of hot tea with milk, was sitting in the yard, scratching something on the concrete of the walkway.

He frowned. "Shouldn't you be in school, young lady?"

She didn't look up; the beads on her braids clattered as she shook her head. "Nope. I'm sick today."

Winston thought about the knot of kids throwing mud at Mrs. Martinez. He was pretty sure this was one of them. "Is your mom's name Margaret?"

"Yeah." The child pointed towards the door. "She's home from work - only a half day today. Her boyfriend won't be back until sundown." She continued her scratching. Winston looked down as he passed; it looked like writing, but not in any alphabet he recognized. He wished he had a camera; Spengler would know what it was.

The extra PKE meter he'd stashed in his jacket pocket chirped quietly. It was set to record; he glanced at his watch to note the time, 2:05 pm.

He took a breath and knocked on the door. After a long pause, a woman with skin like mahogany and eyes that spoke of hardship opened it. "Good afternoon. What can I do for you?" she asked, in a voice that sounded like she'd never seen a stranger before and didn't want to now.

"Margaret Patterson?" She nodded. "I'm Winston Zeddemore, of the Ghostbusters. We were hired to take a case out here - "

"The old silo?" she interrupted. He nodded. "Good. That place has needed taking care of for years. My uncle got injured out there when the investment group tried to fix it up." Her expression softened a fraction. "So what brings you out to this end of town?"

"That's sort of a complicated question. May I come in for a minute?" He watched her face as she thought about it. Finally, she nodded and opened the door wider.

The front room had old, dark wallpaper that was starting to peel at the corners. She gestured towards a clean sofa that was slowly losing its color to the sunlight from the windows, and sat on the wooden chair across from it. "Is this about Tanya?"

"Possibly. We're not sure yet." He took out a pocket-sized notebook and a pencil. "Right now, we're just looking for any possible supernatural activity. We think it might not be restricted to the silo and warehouse anymore."

"Between us, it hasn't been for years." She shook her head. "Something strange. Folks feeling . . . hunted." Her mouth hardened into a line. "And it's preying on the children."

A bubble of anger rose in Winston's throat. They'd encountered more than one spirit that hunted kids - the Bogeyman, the Grundel - and Winston took those cases very, very personally. What might have happened if he'd never answered the ad, if he'd stuck with his dad's company, married and settled down and had kids of his own, and something like that had happened to them? Would he have even believed them? Even if they behaved like these kids did, hassling older women and trying to break into Ecto, they didn't deserve that. "What have you seen?" he asked.

"Seen, not much. But I've felt it." She searched his face for validation; he nodded - some people were sensitive to PKE without a meter. "Tanya - she's a wild thing, no doubt about it. She'd be wild no matter what, after her daddy walking out, I think, but she's - there's something that visits her of an evening." Her voice dropped. "It can't get in the house. I've put brick dust and salt on all the doorsills and windows; my aunt lives in New Orleans and I called her to find out what to do." The salt he knew; the brick dust was a new one on Winston - he made a mental note to ask Ray about it later. "I try to keep her home; she's safe here. But sometimes she gets away from me, and she runs with the other wild children, like a pack of dogs." She glanced nervously at the door. "Sometimes I think she walks through the walls to get out. I've never seen her leave, not once, even when I've been in this room the whole day."

"And you think the presence you've sensed has something to do with it?" Winston gave her a sympathetic look as she nodded.

The next part was going to be tough. "You mentioned her father leaving?"

"Yeah. Around the time she was two. He rejected her completely." Margaret's face creased with old sorrow. "Said anything that white and that wild couldn't be his."

Winston cleared his throat. "Did he have - any reason to believe that might be the case?" Asking other people about their personal lives was not on his top 100 list of things to do at the best of times; asking a near-stranger was acutely embarrassing.

She studied him as if she were looking for something. Finally she shrugged. "What the hell, you're not from around here and I don't think you're a gossip or I'd see you in the tabloids more often. You've been talking to Betty at the library, haven't you?"

"Yeah." He relaxed a bit. "Sorry to get personal, but we think it might relate to the case."

She nodded. "I did make a mistake, right before Robert and I married. I was drunk, and worried that I was settling for something. Guess he proved me right, later. But he was darker than you, with eyes like night. He couldn't be Tanya's father. At least Robert was brown-eyed." She sighed. "It was like I just caught fire that night. The next morning I couldn't imagine what I'd seen in him, and he didn't ever try to even talk to me again. The timing was about right, but not for the reasons Robert thought. I think he just couldn't handle having a little girl who wasn't a daddy's girl. She likes wearing dresses, it wasn't that she was ever a tomboy - just headstrong, like she never needed him." One hand curled in her lap. "I told him that all toddlers acted like that, and they do, but she never really grew out of it."

Winston nodded in sympathy. "Yeah, I remember my little brother and sisters when they were that age. Couldn't tell them anything." He cleared his throat. "The other guy - if you don't want to tell me, that's fine, but was it someone you'd known a while, or someone new?"

"I'd seen him once or twice before, at the grocery. He was a seasonal hand at the warehouse, came into town a few months before and disappeared that winter, looking for work. Haven't seen him since, and I don't really care to." Margaret looked at him. "You think maybe the warehouse ghost has something to do with this? Followed him to me, and then to Tanya?"

"It's possible. We're just investigating right now; we don't have much to go on yet." Winston finished his notes. "One last thing - have you ever seen this image?" He handed her Simon's drawing of the woman in the red cape.

\---

Egon was standing on the sidewalk just outside a white picket fence that looked like it had been painted within the month. Two boxwoods, trimmed into near-perfect rectangular prisms, framed the open gate. The paint on the house was flawless, the lawn neatly mowed, the flowerbeds on either side of the door weeded and planted in well-behaved zinnias. A late-model American-made car was parked in the carport; it had been washed and waxed recently. A flag, its colors undimmed by sun or weather, was the only thing that broke the symmetry of the porch. Light blue curtains fluttered in the windows, and a mass-produced angel figurine, one of those things with huge eyes and oversized gowns that reached to their feet, sat in one window.

The house did not look like its owner would be particularly receptive to a Ghostbuster asking about demonic influences on a child and potential past sexual infidelities.

Egon glanced down at the PKE meter. Something flickered on the screen, but it was too faint to identify. He looked back at the house.

The door swung open slowly, and an older man shuffled onto the porch. "If you're going to hang around like that, you might as well come on up," he called. Egon swallowed his embarrassment and started up the walkway.

The elderly gentleman wore a pair of polyester slacks and a polo shirt, faded from many washings but neatly pressed. "Good afternoon," he said, holding out one slightly shaking hand, "I'm Jim Barker. What brings a Ghostbuster to this neighborhood?"

"We're investigating a potential report of supernatural influence over a group of local children," Egon began. "We believe - "

"This is about Trey, then," the older man nodded. "You're lucky you got here before Jamie got home. He'd throw you out on your ear for suggesting something's wrong with his boy."

Egon focused on the meter. "We're not suggesting that the children are at fault. We - "

"Myself, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they called something up. Crazy things happen in this town, let me tell you." Jim pushed the door open again. "Come in, have a seat, we'll chat."

The sofa in the living room was covered with translucent vinyl. Jim shuffled over and sat on it anyway. Egon took one of the two smaller wooden chairs. "Why don't you start by describing what you mean by 'crazy things,' and we'll continue from there," Egon began. The flickering reading on the meter had grown slightly stronger.

"You can't live and die among the same three thousand people all your life and not notice things," grumbled the old man. "My boy - the men in my family, we all look alike. Same bone structure, same nose, same eyes." He pointed at a set of family photos on the wall. Egon rose to look them over. Jim was essentially correct; the males varied in height, hair color, and complexion, but for the most part their facial features bore an essential similarity, even as children.

One recent family photo showed Jim, a sandy-haired man about Egon's age who was clearly related to him, a thin woman with riotously curly brown hair wearing an ostentatious gold cross, and three children. A girl in her early teens strongly resembled a more delicate version of her father. The little girl had a riot of dishwater-blonde curls that would probably deepen to light brown as she grew closer to puberty, and her mother's chin. Between them sat a boy with hair darker than Peter's, a strong nose, a sharp chin, and piercing blue eyes. The boy bore only the faintest resemblance to his mother and none to his father.

"That's Trey?" Egon asked. Jim nodded. "That photo's from about two years ago. He's a little taller now; he's twelve." Egon mentally aged the face in the photo two years closer to puberty; it was a match for his fleeting glimpse of one of the stick-wielding children from Mrs. Martinez's attack.

"And this must be Mary?" he continued, pointing at the woman.

"That's her, all right. Nice girl. She was a nice girl when they got married, and she's gotten nothing but nicer since." Jim smirked; Egon suspected there was a certain amount of irony in the words. "Funny thing. She's always been devout. Insisted on having the big church wedding and everything. She was a little blue after Lucille was born, and Jamie couldn't figure out how to cheer her up." The smirk faded. "Not that he tried too hard. Jamie's not a sensitive guy. Good at heart, but not exactly gentle. Takes after his mother." Jim pressed his lips together silently for a moment, then went on. "Anyway, when Lucille was about three, Mary started acting very strange. Shouted a lot about hippies and Negroes, pardon the term, destroying the moral fiber of America and all that. Didn't want to leave the house except to go to church. She acted like that for about a month, and we couldn't figure out why, but she was very agitated - would burst out crying over tiny things, spent every spare moment volunteering at the church, one night begged Jamie to forgive her but wouldn't say for what."

"And then she found out she was pregnant?" Egon guessed.

"Bingo. You're as smart as you seem on Carson." Jim steepled his fingers. "She stopped shouting so much just after they confirmed she was in a family way again, but she stayed paranoid like that through the whole pregnancy, terrified and jumping at shadows. Then Trey was born and she went back to normal. Jamie figured it was all just hormones, and she agreed. And they were both happy that she'd had a boy to carry on the family name, not that they don't both love Lucille." He shook his head slowly as his eyes traced the family photos. "She was a sweet baby and not too much of a handful, as toddlers go. Trey was different from the beginning - cried all night, slept all day, grabbed at things early. Hellacious as a toddler. Took to beating up Lucille until she decided to hit him back once. Mary got less and less able to handle him, and then she got pregnant with Genevieve. That was around the same time as my Maude died. Jamie asked me to move in with them, and I did - I figured I could help look out for the kids, and it'd stretch my pension a bit not to have to keep up my own house."

Egon nodded. "And did you notice anything unusual?"

"Not right away. Lucille was a little skittish, but I thought that was just because she'd been through so much at such a young age with her mother." Jim touched a crocheted doily on the sofa arm through the vinyl. "She made these for Mary, you know. It always felt like she was trying to buy her attention back somehow, since Trey and then baby Ginny took all of her time." He turned back to Egon. "But this is the part you really want to hear, I'd guess. Around the time Trey went to school, he started coming back and saying these weird things about his 'real mother' and his 'real family.' The first time, Mary just absolutely broke down in tears. After a year of that, they pulled him out of the public school and sent him to the church school, but they sent him back after three months. Said they couldn't handle him. Mary started hauling him to church two evenings a week on top of Sundays, hoping they'd straighten him out, but he didn't seem to be getting any better. Around the time that other photo was taken, he started sneaking out of the house."

Jim rubbed one hand wearily across his jaw. "He's good at it, too. Mary and Lucille and I can all be home and looking out for him, and somehow he'll make it past us all and disappear. He'll get picked up an hour later by Sheriff Barkwell or the deputy, painting obscene graffiti on the drugstore wall with his friends or throwing trash at cats." He looked away. "If that were it, I'd just think he was an escape artist, but Lucille and I have heard - things."

Egon's eyes narrowed. "What sorts of things?"

"Whispers. Mostly around sunrise and sunset, and only when Trey's here." Jim looked doubtful for the first time in his spiel. "I don't know if they're coming from Trey, or from something else, but they don't sound like his voice. They sound female. I've never seen what's making them, though."

Egon nodded. "May I scan the areas where you've heard the whispering? I believe that may be an important data point."

"Sure." Jim led him into the kitchen. "Just out there," he pointed into the back yard, as neatly trimmed as the front. Egon stepped out of the back door and carefully walked the length of the yard.

He stopped just outside a window. The meter whistled softly. Class Seven residuals, faint but readable. "Mr. Barker, I'm registering a fairly powerful entity that has been here either very recently or repeatedly."

"Not every evening, but close to it," Jim nodded. "That's Trey's room you're standing outside."

"Your son and daughter-in-law haven't noticed the whispering?" Egon asked, changing the settings on the meter slightly.

"If Mary has, she's in denial about it. Jamie's a good man, but he wouldn't notice an elephant in his own dining room until it farted," Jim answered.

Egon raised an eyebrow at the colorful metaphor. "Have there been any repeated designs or symbols that Trey has been drawing or coming home with?"

"Not that I've seen," Jim shrugged. "But he still talks about his 'real' family, especially his 'real mother,' a lot. Lucille thinks he means the kids he runs with, and I'm inclined to agree with her, but none of them are old enough to be a mother, and no one's ever seen an adult with them. The oldest one is Horace, and he's dumber than a box of rocks."

"Thank you," Egon said, tucking the meter back into his pocket and climbing the back stairs again. "I think you have helped our investigation tremendously."

"Good to hear it," Jim said, smiling slightly. "Oh, and one more thing."

"Yes?" Egon paused just before the front door.

"I said earlier Trey doesn't look anything like our side of the family." He pointed at a wedding photo between the door and the window.

Egon leaned in and squinted at the slightly faded portrait. Mary and Jamie, much younger, were in three-quarters profile, their backs mostly to the camera. Between them stood a man in a dark suit, holding a Bible. He had dark hair, a strong nose, and a sharp, pointed chin.

"The pastor at their church?" Egon asked, startled despite himself.

Jim nodded slowly. "The former pastor. Took a call in another state. Jamie wondered if that might be one of the things that caused Mary's semi-breakdown, that the pastor she'd relied on for a decade went away." He frowned. "Problem is, he left town a full year before Trey was born." He half-shrugged at Egon, the question clearly written across his eyes.

"Fascinating," Egon murmured, his eyes darting back and forth from the minister's photo to Trey's.

\---

Peter sauntered into the greasy spoon, whistling to himself. It hadn't changed too much from the last time he'd been here, although the interior walls were now light mint instead of off-white and the counters had been refinished. The mid-afternoon crowd was light, although he'd been hoping for nonexistent - the more people there were to overhear, the harder this was going to be.

The woman behind the cash register with salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a neat bun gave him a steely glare. "You can sit down at the counter on your own, bub," she said, barely opening her lips. Her voice suggested a pack-a-day cigarette habit.

"Actually, I'm here on official business." Peter tried his camera-ready smile, the one that oozed celebrity. Her stare became slightly less chilly, but only slightly. Hoo, boy. Tough one. He opened up his body language a bit more. "We've gotten some anomalous readings on some of the local kids, and we wanted to ask their parents a few quick questions. Is Dina Carver around?"

"You're looking at her." Her eyebrows lowered. "You got a reading off of Robbie? With what? What kind of reading?"

"Elevated levels of paranormal activity. And it was off of a group of kids, but we have some reasons to believe that Robbie may have been one of them." He kept his voice low; there was no reason to broadcast their suspicions to the occupied table at the other end of the diner.

"I don't believe in that stuff," she scoffed. Her fingers drummed on the edge of the cash register. "You guys are scam artists. I dunno how you got all those city folks fooled, but no one out here buys what you're selling."

He shrugged. "Tell that to Mr. Colewood." Sure, it wasn't a good idea to be too confrontational, but sometimes the appeal to authority worked.

Not this time. "Yeah, I heard he hired you guys to take care of the old warehouse. Nothing strange about that; folks don't want the increased traffic through the town that having a shopping center there would bring, so they sabotaged the project." She scowled, but not at him. "Some of us liked it when the through traffic picked up, mind you. Surviving on just the locals is tough, even when you've got the best fries and pie in town."

"The pie sure looks great." That wasn't a lie; Peter didn't have Ray's appetite or Egon's sweet tooth, but the meringue on the lemon pie was piled high and fluffy, and delicately browned. If he had more time, he'd be tempted. "Doesn't sound like you'd be on the saboteurs' side; why didn't you turn them in? Was the sheriff in on it?"

"Got no proof," she shrugged. "And no, I couldn't name any names, either. No one knew who did it, and no one would admit it, especially after old Elijah Patterson broke a leg and almost lost a foot."

Peter wasn't sure what to say to that. "So, nothing unusual around here? No strange occurrences?"

Dina chewed on her lip for a moment. "Define strange. Not meaning your stuff."

Peter balanced the possibilities and decided to go for broke. "Like kids being born with the wrong fathers, and not just in the hanky-panky kind of way."

Dina's hands froze. Very carefully, looking down the diner counter instead of at him, she asked "Or when getting preggers shouldn't have even been on the table?"

"That, too," Peter shrugged.

She eyed him with a combination of distrust and curiosity. "You're a carny boy, aren't you?" Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. "This is personal, isn't it?"

"I don't know yet." He shrugged. "I came into town to do a job, and then I run into a kid who's either the son I can't possibly have had, or the half-brother I never heard about."

A door slammed shut behind her eyes, followed by another one opening. "Yeah, you're mixed up in this whole nasty business, too. Hold on. We can't talk here." She untied her apron and marched over to the grill window. "Hey, Ernie!" she yelled through. "I'm gonna take a thirty-minute smoke break. Donna can run register if anyone comes in." She turned back to Peter. "Let's go."

She led him a block and a half down, to a rather beat-up building with a burned-out neon sign. Guessing from the shapes he could see, it was a pool hall. He followed her into the well-smoked darkness. She tossed a couple of bucks at the bartender. "Two usuals." The bartender handed her two bottles of light beer and dropped the change into his tip jar, as she slid into a booth underneath the television blaring baseball scores.

She took a pull on the beer, lit a cigarette, and regarded Peter with hardened eyes. "First of all, I don't know which of the town biddies sent you my way, but what they probably told you is true." Another puff. "I've never exactly been in the market for a man."

Realization dawned on Peter. "Ah." His eyes darted involuntarily to her wedding band; Peter made a habit of noticing those.

She nodded. "Philip Carver is the Town Queer, and I'm the Town Dyke, and everyone pretty much knows it. It's a marriage of convenience - mostly his, since the sheriff before this one was not real happy with the idea of there being any fags out here at all. Figured he could scare us all back to the city." She toyed with the bottle without actually drinking from it. "We tried it, once, just to see what it was like. Didn't work out for either of us." She took a swig. "And that was more'n fifteen years ago. Robbie's only ten. Well, ten and a half."

"Mm hmm." Peter nodded and paid attention. That she was telling him this story at all was remarkable, even if she knew he had a stake in it.

"There aren't that many other lesbians in Carter Lake. Usually they can't wait to get out of here, and if they ever come back, they arrive with a 'housemate' or a terminally broken heart. I'm too stubborn to leave. That, and I'm kind of married to the diner, too." She stubbed out the cigarette and gestured with a fresh one, not yet lit. "So I don't get laid much, you know? But about eleven years ago, almost closer to twelve, now, there was this gorgeous blonde babe, a lipstick femme to die for. Just being near her, breathing her air, was like being set on fire." She paused to light the new cig. "Came into town to visit relatives, she said. Found out later that was a lie; the family she said she was staying with didn't even recognize her picture. But I didn't know that at the time, and I fell for her hard." The smoke wreathed her head and softened her features. "We had about a month of something really, really good. At least, it was good for me, and she said it was great for her, but then one Monday morning I woke up and she was gone. No note, no phone call, nothing. It was like she'd never existed." She blinked - whether from the smoke, from some trace of tears, or from the flickering lighting was hard to tell.

Peter nodded slowly. "And then you turned up preggers?"

"Smart guy." She drained the last half of her beer. "Wanna go for two out of two?" She flipped open her wallet and handed over a photo.

Peter peered at the child in the photograph, and realized he'd seen that smile and those narrow shoulders before, recently. "You turned up in a family way with a kid who's the spitting image of Mr. Colewood's driver?"

"Who I would not have rolled on a bet, even if I were into dick." Dina parked the butt in the ashtray and tapped her fingers on the table. "You know, it's really 'spitten image.' Like oyster spat." Her mouth quirked at the corner. "Which is the problem, really."

"Except oysters are bisexual. In both senses." Peter decided not to pursue that line of conversation.

"So, not exactly a virgin birth, but close enough as makes no odds for me." She shrugged, her hands spread. "You guys are into weird. You ever hear of anything like that before?"

"I haven't, but I'm willing to bet that either Ray or Egon has." Peter took a swallow from his own beer. He could feel the gears turning in his own mind, just below the conscious surface, and he was pretty sure he didn't like what they were grinding towards.

Dina glanced at her watch. "I gotta get back to work; the dinner crowd'll start showing up in half an hour. You guys find anything out, let me know, okay?" Her eyes slid to the side. "Robbie is - I mean, he's a good kid, best thing that ever happened in my life, even with the weirdness. But he hangs out with a bad crowd, and the more I try to keep him home, the more he slips through my fingers. Philip's got even less luck than I do at keeping a grip on him."

"The other kids in that bad crowd," Peter asked, groping for a concept that was still fuzzy at the edges, like a free-floating repeater that hadn't fully manifested yet - "Are they _all_ born to the wrong fathers?"

Dina smiled crookedly. "You've got the picture. Drop by later if you need a bite to eat." She headed for the door like a woman on a mission; Peter took another pull and listened to his gears grinding.

\---

Winston was looking up into the trees that lined the sides of the road. The first signs of fall were starting to show in the leaves, hints of red under the green. It surprised him how little places that were under supernatural influence showed it, sometimes. He would have expected, based on his upbringing, the areas where the paranormal lurked to be twisted by the strange energies, even barren. Instead, they often looked normal. The haunted houses that looked the most haunted were usually hoaxes.

Ray had tried to explain it once, saying that Nature just gently pushed back when unnatural things intruded, and she was strong enough to just go on around them, to keep them contained. But here was an entire town that seemed to have something weird going on, all contained in the human sphere. The rest of the world, the trees and fields and lawns, went on as if nothing were wrong.

Tanya had stared at him when he left. He'd had the distinct feeling that he was being marked, that someone was going to be hearing a report on him later. Her eyes had seemed strangely old and calculating. Winston shuddered just a bit; he'd be glad to get back to the safety of Ecto and his partners.

He came around the corner of the neighborhood grocery store where he'd parked, and was annoyed to see someone sitting on Ecto's hood. He frowned; why hadn't the alarm gone off?

"Hey, be careful, you shouldn't - " he started, and was brought up short as the interloper turned towards him, tossing her hair and giving him a dazzling smile.

She was medium height, with cafe-au-lait skin, green eyes, and dark chestnut hair with auburn highlights. A clatter of bangle bracelets danced on her wrists, and a simple necklace of round beads in some deep green stone graced her long neck. She wore a goldenrod miniskirt and a low-cut blouse in a slinky orange fabric, with a pair of high-heeled sandals curving her calves just right. Her hips were rounded, her chest shapely, her ass pert where it perched over the right headlight.

She was _perfect_, the woman of his dreams. And she was smiling at him like she'd been waiting for him right here for years.

"You're Winston Zeddemore, aren't you?" she asked, in a voice like silk and honey, with a trace of an accent he couldn't place. "The Ghostbuster?" She shifted her weight, tightening the blouse across her bust and hiking the skirt up just a hint. "I've heard so much about you." Her nails were perfectly manicured and painted a rich burgundy. "I'd heard you were in town, and I wanted to meet you."

Winston cleared his throat. "Yeah, that's me." He could feel himself blushing under her gaze, and hoped it didn't show. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

"I assure you, the pleasure is all mine," she purred, and all but poured herself off of the hood. Her hips swayed like a snake as she closed on him; her perfume kicked at some half-remembered memory. "I've been curious about you for a very long time." Her breasts heaved under the blouse as she spoke, and suddenly he was very glad for the extra layer of the jumpsuit.

He met her eyes and just about fell in. She was gorgeous, mesmerizing, fascinating; her cheeks were rounded, her eyes almond-shaped, her mouth exactly the shape of Cupid's bow. There was something familiar about her jaw . . . what was it? Winston's eyebrows drew together as he tried to think. Had he seen her before, somewhere?

"You've already done me and the town a huge favor, getting rid of the silo ghost," she said, her voice soft and rolling. She slithered to his side, slid an arm around his waist. "I want to know what makes you tick." Her other hand brushed the side of his face, a caress that promised more. "Come with me." She pressed against the small of his back, drawing him forward.

He took one step towards her, then stopped. "I'm sorry - what was your name again, ma'am?" His heart was pounding; her proximity was making his head swim. The temperature had risen at least twenty degrees.

"That's not important, but you can call me Kendra." She took his hand firmly. "Please, come with me, I _need_ you." A shower of sparks ran down his spine, and he shivered.

He took half a step more before he got his feet to behave. "Kendra, I'm sorry, but I'm on duty right now. I'd really love to talk to you, as soon as we're not on the clock, but I have to get back to the guys." _The guys_ \- something echoed in his head. His eyes fell to her jawline, the curve of her ear. He was sure he'd seen her before, somewhere; he just couldn't remember where.

"No," she laughed, "I need you _now_." She leaned in on him, and her lips met his in a rush of wind and flame.

For a moment, he couldn't think. Her hands cradled his head between them, holding him tightly as his heart hammered in his chest . Then he remembered; the shock snapped his head back, breaking contact. He stepped back and leaned against Ecto, breathing like he'd just run the bases at Shea Stadium.

She frowned, her eyes narrowing, and she reached for him again. "I _said_, I need you now."

He shook his head, backing away. His hand fumbled for the door handle. "Lady, I've never met you before in my life. I have a girlfriend already."

"I know." Kendra grinned wolfishly. "But she doesn't need to know, does she? Right here, it's just you and me." She closed on him again. "If you don't want to come with me, I can stay with you instead." Her nails trailed down the inside of his arm. "How roomy is that back seat?"

Her nails. They looked just like Janine's. She'd just changed from her usual bright red polish to something wine-red for fall. Winston caught at the memory of Janine's hands; it seemed to calm the unnatural fluttering in his ribcage.

Kendra scowled again. "Stop thinking about your girlfriend. I'm here, right now. Take me."

Winston wrenched the driver's door open and jumped into Ecto, slamming it shut to get a barrier between him and her. "You'll never get anywhere with anyone coming on that strong, miss." He was whistling in the dark; he wanted nothing more than to follow wherever she wanted to lead him and screw her senseless. But he knew better. Every intuition was screaming that she was bad news. "My mama raised me right," he muttered under his breath as he jammed the key into the ignition. He forced himself to think about his mother, about Wanda, about Janine. About the guys, whom he needed to tell about Tanya and her mother.

Kendra's eyes flashed, and her lips curled back from her teeth. "Stop it. Stop it!" She stamped one foot, hips shaking. "Come back here!"

"No way." Ecto's engine roared to life; Winston threw her into reverse and peeled out of the parking lot. Kendra shrieked in rage; it sounded more like a bird's cry than a human's.

Much to his relief, she didn't follow him. In fact, when he glanced into the rear-view mirror for the second time, she was gone.

Winston's hands were shaking on the wheel as he headed back to the main thoroughfare. "What just happened?" he whispered to the dashboard.

A single purple light blinked on the panel above the radio. It was part of Ray's new security system, and unlabeled. Winston suspected he knew what it meant; he gripped the wheel tightly enough to still his hands and steered back towards the library.

\---

Peter set the empty bottle back on the table and wondered vaguely why he'd bothered to finish it. His fingernails idly peeled back the label. It had been a very long time since he'd gotten really, really drunk. He hadn't really wanted to in years. Tipsy, sure; a good buzz, even, at a few New Year's parties. But smashed? Not since . . .

And why did he want to now?

"Get you another?" purred a sultry voice from above him and to his left. He started to look up and was caught short by a glimpse of a garter at the hem of a bright blue mini-skirt. He swallowed and followed the shallow curve of the hip upwards.

She was thin, and fairly tall, with a pair of three-inch pumps that made her look even taller. Not much up front, but enough to make a good handful, and the curve in back more than made up for it. Her legs went on for forever, with shapely ankles. A spill of strawberry blonde tumbled over her shoulders in riotous curls, with an assortment of highlights in copper and platinum. Round cheeks and a strong jaw framed a mouth painted in scarlet, and blue-hazel eyes glittered behind a pair of cat's-eye glasses.

He had seen her before somewhere, he was sure of it. He plastered on his most charming fake smile. "Hey, did you go to Barnard in the '70s?"

" 'Fraid not. Never been out of this two-horse town." She smiled, a warm, secret smile meant only for him. "Aren't you Dr. Venkman? The Ghostbuster? I've seen you on TV."

"Yeah, that's me." He shifted so the patch on the jumpsuit was facing her. "We were hired to take care of the old silo."

"Oh, I _love_ you," she gushed. "So many people have been hurt out there, and it's always been so dangerous. So there really was a ghost?" Her eyes were huge, round, innocent. She smelled of malt and vanilla and something else that reminded him of . . . something else.

"Yup." He made a dismissive gesture. "But once we got a good bead on it, it was no problem. It won't be bothering you any more, Miss . . . ?" He raised his eyebrows at her; one hand reached for hers unbidden.

She let him take it, freshly painted nails tracing the pad of his palm. "You can call me Crystal, Dr. Venkman. Mind if I sit down?" She didn't wait for a response; she slid into the booth, almost into his lap. His heartrate jumped. She leaned closer and cooed, "I don't mind telling you, you're a real hero." She licked her lips. "I think heroes deserve rewards, don't you?" Suddenly, her lips were just below his ear, and her hands were at his waist.

A white flame sprang to life somewhere below his navel. "Not that I'm going to say no," Peter grinned, "but isn't the booth here a little bit public?"

"Don't worry," she whispered, edging the table back and kneeling on the bench seat next to him, "no one will see us. I promise."

He was hit by a wave of deja vu. No, it was something closer to the feel of a dream, one of those dreams he dreaded that came true later, but not quite the same way, so he couldn't stop it in time. He shook his head to clear it. Had he dreamed this? The way she was acting, was he dreaming now?

"Hey, hey," he whispered, reaching up to brush a hand through her curly mane. "I'm all for moving fast, but I'd like a little more privacy, you know?" Actually, for all that he played a ladies' man, he generally didn't try to bed a girl on the first date. He hadn't since college. But Crystal was stirring up feelings of urgency he hadn't had since high school.

"It's all right," she answered, her lips so close to his they brushed as she spoke. "Just look at me. Look at me, and don't think about anyone else. No one will see us. No one will know."

"Unless I brag about you," he said with a fox's grin. She looked displeased for a second, then nudged the table a bit further away and straddled him, pressing her lips to his with a ferocity he hadn't felt in . . .

In . . .

_Fourteen years,_ whispered a voice in his head that sounded more like Egon than himself.

He wrenched himself away from the kiss, from the blazing heat of her hands and lips and thighs. She tried to follow him, as if she didn't want him to get any air. He got his hands onto her shoulders and pushed her back enough to see her face.

Not the same. Not the same, although he knew each individual feature was familiar. Her hair wasn't the same color, but the shape and style was Dana's. And he'd recognize that taste from anywhere. The name that had escaped him earlier jolted loose from a mass of jumbled memories.

"Lisa?" he gasped.

She pulled back, annoyed. "No. My name's Crystal. We've never met before." Something pulsed behind her eyes, and the memory of Lisa spun out of his hands, into a whirlwind and away.

"Don't." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, forced himself to center his thoughts. His mind was being pressed on, his perceptions manipulated; it was obvious now. He could feel it; it was more real than the pressure of her flesh against him. The desire that had been building in his belly drained like someone had pulled the plug. Carefully, he pushed back against the psychic assault. "We _have_ met. Your name may not be Lisa, but I'll bet it isn't Crystal, either." He felt the force redouble against the ego-shields he was building. Oh, this was bad. He needed the guys. "And you took something from me."

The mental onslaught pressed in hard on him, a flurry of claws, and then let up when his shields held. The melodious voice dropped half an octave as she chuckled. "I took nothing you did not freely give. And I suppose it is flattering to be remembered." Lips brushed his cheek again, hot and moist. "Open your eyes, Peter. Look at me."

"No." He wasn't sure that it would crack his armor, but he wasn't about to take chances. "You won't be the same person, anyway."

"Perhaps not." Hips rocked against him, beckoning; an echo of the earlier heat stirred in him, but he was pretty sure that wasn't his, either. It might have been projective empathy, or just an illusion, but he hadn't reacted like that to someone new in years. Wait, that was it - she was playing back his own reactions for him, what his teenaged body and mind had done, almost a decade and a half before.

He stood up, pushing against her weight and shoving the table away; she stumbled, nearly falling as her feet were forced to the floor. Peter took a chance and opened his eyes, relived to find that she wasn't looking directly at him. "I'm not the same boy I used to be," he stated flatly, then abruptly wheeled and ran for the side exit.

A metallic screech rang after him, like talons on a tin roof, but when he emerged into the late afternoon light of the alley, he was alone.

\---

Ray had his head tilted back as he walked, gazing skyward. He was mumbling to himself, mulling over everything he'd learned so far. "Readings we've never seen before," he murmured, "residue of a _lifetime_ of exposure to PKE energy and psychic residue, can't wait to show Egon, boy, this is _big_, maybe the biggest single-specter haunting we've seen yet!"

That was how he nearly walked into the young woman on the bicycle. Fortunately, she swerved just in time not to hit him; unfortunately, she veered into the bush next to the sidewalk and had to brake to avoid losing her balance. Ray rushed over and caught the bicycle before it started to fishtail.

"I'm so sorry, miss!" he was exclaiming, steadying the bike as she dismounted, when she laughed. "Hey, aren't you Dr. Stantz? The famous Ghostbuster?"

"I don't know about famous; that's really Peter's job. But yeah," he responded, "I'm Dr. Stantz."

"Oh, that's so cool!" She bounced on her toes. "I'm one of your biggest fans. I've read about you guys in magazines for years!"

She was medium height, with a light tan and a boyish build, wearing _very_ short shorts and a tank top, with a pair of cat's-eye glasses. Her hair was dark and wavy, bleached lighter in places by the sun, and reached just past her shoulders. Her face was long and delicate, her nose turned up, her lips broad.

There was something very familiar about her.

No, there were a lot of individual somethings about her that were familiar. She didn't make a coherent whole. All the trees were there, but there wasn't a forest, somehow. Ray squinted at her, then realized he was staring and glanced away.

"Aw, don't be bashful!" She smiled, white teeth dazzling in the late afternoon light. "Now that we've run into each other, I want to get to know you better!"

Her hands. Those were Janine's hands; Ray would recognize those anywhere. They even moved like Janine's hands. He looked back at her face. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, miss?"

"You can call me Janey." She kicked down the stand on the bike and leaned it against the bush. "Gosh, I've heard so much about you - is it true you're in town for business?" She stepped towards him, brushing one hand - that was Janine's new nail polish color, he was sure of it - against the collar of the flight suit.

Ray concentrated, then disengaged the talking part of his mind while the rest tried an experiment. "Oh, yeah, we were hired to clear out the ghost at the old warehouse; had you head any stories about that? I mean, we caught it, but we're not sure what exactly it was." He focused on a single moving image, a set of visual memories.

"It was a damn nuisance, is what it was. Kept people from going about their business at night. I'm _so_ glad to see it gone." She was growing shorter and rounder in the hips. Her hair was reddening. Her eyes had been grey before; they were sliding towards aquamarine. She took another step closer. Her voice had a trace of a Brooklyn accent as she murmured, "You're a real hero in my book, Ray."

"All in a day's work." He grinned, and tried not to let her reflection show in his own eyes. He replaced one set of memories with another. "It's a real pleasure, keeping the world safe from supernatural intrusions; it really makes you feel like you've done your part at the end of the day, you know?"

If she caught his meaning, she didn't let on. "Absolutely. I think we all feel a lot safer knowing that you guys are on the job." One hand curled around the nape of his neck, as its fingers grew longer and paler and the nails grew shorter and colorless. "I don't think your publicity gives you enough credit. Especially you, Dr. Stantz." She was getting taller now, her hips narrowing. "Don't you ever get tired of your other colleagues getting all the attention? I think you need a little love from your adoring public." A throb of lust smacked into Ray, a wave pouring off of - her?

He tried to ignore it. It was going to be irrelevant in a second. "All the attention? Oh, you must mean Peter again."

"Yes," said the other, and its head snapped back, startled, at the sound of its voice, which was now very close to Peter's warm tenor. Ray took a step to the side as the other looked around wildly, realizing that its shape had changed. It glared down at its hands, then back at Ray with murderous rage in its eyes, now red and no longer even pretending to be human. "What did you do?"

"Counter-spell to your shapeshifting." That wasn't quite true, but it was close enough. "So I'm guessing you're the one we're looking for?" Unfortunately, he didn't have his pack or a trap with him. He hoped Winston was on his way back with Ecto by now.

"I should rip your heart out right now and eat it in front of you." It leaned in on Ray, hands bent into claws. Ray swallowed and regretted having chosen Peter as his focus for the second shift; watching something that was 90% his friend's visage (and the other 10% was still Janine, which didn't help either) slowly devolve into something demonic was extremely disturbing, even though it didn't _feel_ like Peter.

"I've heard worse threats." Ray backed up a step, and prepared to run.

Instead, the not-Peter whirled around in a flash of red and feathers, and it was gone, as if it had never been there. The bicycle clattered to the ground; suddenly it was rustier, with several spokes missing and crooked handles.

Ray yanked the PKE meter from his pocket. "Please have recorded that, please have recorded that . . . _yes_!" he crowed, pumping one fist in the air. He glanced around to get his bearings, and took off running towards the library.

\---

Egon let the library door swing shut behind him. He was the first one back, it looked like; that was mildly surprising, but not extremely so. He headed back towards the tiny media room; since he had the time, it might be useful to diagram the various confirmed and presumed relationships involved. Perhaps there was a pattern he was still missing.

A shadow moved my the main desk. Egon turned to ask the librarian a question before realizing that the figure moving towards him wasn't the plump elderly lady who had been so eager to help them earlier.

She was of middling height, in a white blouse, charcoal pinstriped blazer, and matching pencil skirt. Her hair was chestnut with auburn highlights, and fairly short. Her legs were long, her hips round, her waist narrow, her shoulders broad. A tiny pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, framing almond-shaped hazel eyes.

Egon's gaze darted to her hands, her cheekbones, her arms, her feet. He carefully catalogued every detail of her appearance. It occurred to him that he was staring, but then, she didn't seem to mind.

"Oh, Betty said she thought you'd be returning! I'm so glad to finally meet you," she purred, leaning against the edge of the card catalog. "You're Dr. Spengler, aren't you?"

"Yes." He carefully set the his notepad and pencil down next to the microfilm reader. "And you are?"

"Oh, you can call me Naomi. I help out around here after school hours." She tucked a stray lock of hair back behind her ear and smiled. "We don't get many celebrities around here. Could I ask you some questions about your work?"

"I don't see why not. I would imagine you'd be curious." Egon's fingers made a reflexive move towards his chest pocket; he clasped them together and tried to look casual. The temperature in the tiny room seemed to be rising rapidly.

"Very much so. For instance, you all seem to be such a team - even when you're on television, you're usually in pairs. Are you really all such good friends?" She wriggled into the media room and perched one hip on the table, leaning forward just enough to display her cleavage. Egon felt the color rising in his face despite himself.

He nodded. "We are. Peter, Ray, and I have been friends since our undergraduate days. Winston didn't join us until we founded the business, but he's been indispensable. In a way, we're almost like family." Egon glanced out the window at the nearly horizontal light. "A chosen family, an adopted one. Perhaps we're all looking for the things our families of birth couldn't give us."

Naomi closed on him like a panther stalking a rabbit. "I see. I think I understand - sometimes the family you choose is all the family you have." Her eyes gleamed in the orange-red reflections of sunset. "And what about the other people in your lives? The ones who aren't familial?" One hand reached out and trailed down his arm.

"I don't have many of those." The touch aroused a hormonal response. Egon felt his heartrate increase, and probably his blood pressure.

"Well, perhaps I could help rectify that," she said, in an almost sing-song voice. She slid forwards, her arm about to curl around him and draw him to her.

"Janine's hands," Egon observed.

"What?" Naomi replied, eyes narrowing.

"The legs are Janine's frame and Peter's musculature. The skin tone is Peter's, but the capillary response is Ray's, as are the cheekbones. That's Janine's jaw and mouth on Peter's neck. You've averaged their hair." He gestured with one hand, pointing out each feature as he named it, as he fumbled in his pocket with the other. "Your appearance is an assemblage of details from my surface memories. I'm guessing that most people don't look closely enough to pick out individual ones." He plucked out the antennae. Immediately, the meter began breedling; Class Seven readings, very strong and rather dispersed.

Naomi snarled, "What is it with you four? Not once in nearly sixteen years have I had such trouble as I have had with you today." Her features began to melt; the gleam in her eyes now was blood-red, and not from the sun.

"Where's the librarian?" Egon glanced behind her. Something else was moving in the stacks.

"Behind the counter. Don't worry, I don't _think_ I killed her." The amorphous shape in front of him still had teeth enough to smile, "Just a blow to the head."

The main door to the library swung open. "Egon!" Ray stage-whispered, not quite able even in his excitement to shout across a library. "You'll never believe what, oh, I see you've met her." He stopped, and started backing away slowly. A featureless shadow scuttled behind him.

"I think they've found us, Ray." Egon glanced left and right exaggeratedly; Ray followed, and his eyebrows raised in surprise. He mouthed "the kids" as he continued to back away; Egon nodded slowly.

The thing that had been Naomi laughed. "You do realize I can hear what you're thinking, don't you?"

Ray shrugged. "Images, sure. Wasn't sure about words."

The door flew open again, and Peter nearly fell through it. "Hey, are you guys back - oh, hey, Ray, I - oh, _crud_." His eyes swept the entirety of the library, and hardened as they crossed the deep shadows. "You again," he muttered as the shifting shape settled into a solid form once more.

She was still female, explicitly so, and naked except for a waist-length cape of red feathers. Her hair was that same unnatural red, flowing like a river over her shoulders; her skin was ivory-pale, almost corpse-like. She was half a head taller than Egon, and thin, but still seductively curved, with a bosom far too large for her frame. Her eyes were pupil-less, blood-red, and glowing, and her mouth was full of small, sharp teeth when she smiled.

"Me again." She gestured towards the scuttling shadows. "And my children."

"They're not yours," Peter growled.

"They are," she insisted. "Not one of them would exist if not for me. I planned them; I carried them within me; I begat them upon their mothers. I am the only parent that ever wanted them." She spread her arms out and beckoned with her long, claw-like fingers, and half a dozen faces appeared between the long rows of shelves.

"That's bullshit," Ray snapped before Peter could say anything. "They may not have planned them, but their mothers love them like crazy. They're _worried_ about them, about what you're doing to them."

"What exactly _are_ you doing to them?" Egon asked, raising his voice over a muffled sound from outside. He twiddled a dial on the PKE meter. "They all have significant residual readings, which seem to get stronger with their proximity to you."

"Yeah, and what's the deal with the lack of footprints?" Peter spoke up again.

She laughed, a sound like a leopard's roar. "I held their germ in myself, and infused it with my own essence. They hold a fragment of my own powers. I have given them stealth, and the ability to blend into shadow." She glanced at Tanya and Simon, who had crept close enough to make our their features. "The more clever of them have found ways to use my abilities that even I would never have dreamed."

Peter edged closer to Ray. "And they use them for graffiti and to harass old ladies."

Simon looked at his feet, ears reddening. Tanya glared at Peter like he'd demonstrated a complete lack of hipness. Horace edged out from behind the stairs to the mezzanine, shaking his head. "That's kid stuff," the teenager blustered. "We're moving past that now."

Ray shuffled a few steps towards Egon. "Like what? Grand theft auto?"

"We'd be the best burglars ever," Horace said, crossing his arms. "People don't see us when we don't want them to. We don't leave tracks or fingerprints unless we step in something. Simon there is a whiz at picking locks."

"Like father, like son," Ray murmured, almost too low for Peter to catch.

"Once we learn enough about electronics to knock out video cameras, we'll be able to take whatever we want, from wherever we want." Horace glanced at the Lady in Red, who smiled indulgently at him, like a trainer watching her dog do tricks.

"And what about when you want to be noticed?" Ray asked quietly. Horace scowled. Ray shook his head and edged towards the boy. "The more you use her powers, the less anyone sees you, right? That's why the town doesn't seem to think you're an issue worth pursuing - when you're not causing trouble, the ones who aren't family, they just forget about you." He held out both hands. "So you act out; you _make_ them see you. Horace, you want to be noticed. You work really hard at it. I don't think you know how to attract any notice other than negative attention any more."

"That's not true," Horace muttered, staring at his feet. Simon and Tanya exchanged a glance. A slightly younger boy - Peter thought it might be Robbie - broke from the magazine racks and ran to Tanya's side.

The Lady in Red laughed again. "Of course it's not true. My powers are free to you, my children; they do not come with such a steep cost."

"I don't think your kind do anything for free," Egon replied, head cocked slightly. The last rays of sunset slipped from the window; the sky outside blazed orange.

"So, is she a succubus?" Peter asked. "Because I'd hate to think I let one of those get her hands on my orb and scepter, but that's all I can think of that fits."

"Close," said Egon, glancing at Ray. Ray nodded, and added "I think you'll have to take this one, Spengs - anything further back than Greek and my pronunciation is horrible."

Peter blinked, then tensed. The kids glanced at each other. The Lady in Red scowled. "You do not have your weapons. What manner of devilry are you proposing?"

Egon took a deep breath, closed his eyes with the flinch that meant he was about to do something he considered deeply undignified, raised his arms, and began chanting something in a language Peter didn't recognize. Sumerian, he guessed from the cadence. He caught the names 'Enki,' 'Inanna,' and 'Ereshkigal,' which he remembered from Mythology of the Ancient World back in undergrad. Damn, they must be in deep shit if Egon was doing an incantation.

"Now!" shouted Ray, and he and Peter broke for the door as Winston kicked it in. A smaller kid, dark-haired and sharp-eyed, dashed from the foyer to block them; Winston dodged him and jumped over the carousel. Peter met him first, and grabbed the second pack Winston passed him; the older man tossed the third one to Ray and grabbed the thrower from his own. Smaller feet pattered towards them from somewhere above.

The Lady in Red screeched like tearing metal and dove for Egon, fingers grabbing for him. Winston got off a wild shot that didn't hit her but blocked her path. Egon's deep voice rose as he reached the end of the incantation; he brought his hands together over his head with a clap that rang through the library, and the demoness dissolved into a whirlwind of flame and light.

"Is she - did you dispel her?" Peter asked, buckling the pack at his waist as he jogged back to Egon's side.

"No, that working merely breaks her illusion and returns her to her true form." Egon looked like he'd bitten a raw onion. "We'll still have to trap her."

"Coming right up," Peter grinned, grabbing the trap from his pack, but before he could toss it, the whirlwind condensed into solidity again.

She was still female, and still naked, but much less human. The red feathers now formed a huge pair of wings springing from her shoulders, easily spanning twelve feet. Her calves and feet were yellow and scaled, and talons like a bird of prey's clawed at the industrial carpet. An owl's hooked beak clacked where her mouth had been, and her eyes were surrounded by feathered discs. Her hair rose to a pointed crest, and was filled with loose feathers in the same red as her wings. Feline claws curled from her fingers; she lashed out and shredded the end of the card catalog into splinters. A snakelike tail coiled to the floor.

Simon recoiled. "That's what she really looks like?" Tanya shrieked and dove behind a chair. Horace looked like he was about to pass out, or possibly just throw up. High-pitched screams from some of the younger children sounded from the upstairs stacks.

"Get her!" Ray hollered, opening fire. The demoness screamed like a panther and beat her wings once, rising effortlessly into the air and almost hitting the ceiling. Ray's stream strafed the ceiling tiles; Peter and Winston jockeyed for position, looking for a clear shot at her that wouldn't endanger any of the children. Egon backed away, still without a pack of his own.

Suddenly Tanya was on her feet again; she stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled sharply. Instantly, she was a blur; Egon's eyes slid away from her, as if she were impossible to focus on. Something moved on the stairs.

"You cannot use my own power to hide from me, my children!" The demoness rolled between Ray's and Winston's streams, heading towards the stairway.

Peter broke away from their formation and planted himself in her way. "Hey, Lisa. You, me, we should really catch up; it's been a while. Wow, I let _that_ near Little Petey? I guess I'm braver than I thought." He let loose a stream directly at her face; she dodged easily, but at least her momentum was broken.

"You think to toy with me, mortal?" Again her laughter was like tearing metal. "I could have you at my leisure again, should I choose."

"You tried that already." He fired again, with the same results; Winston wasn't having any better luck, and Ray seemed to be holding back. "Fool me once, and all that."

She surged forwards. "None of you will escape me. None of you!"

A book soared from behind the ruined card catalog and struck her in the beak. It was followed by a second and a third. Ray veered off and covered for the barrage.

"Ungrateful fools!" she spat. "You owe your very existence to me, and you repay me so?" She reversed direction and soared towards Simon and Horace; Ray fired and caught her for a second, but she writhed and broke the stream's grip before Winston could add to the containment. Egon watched as a train of blurs raced down the stairs and out the door into the purple twilight.

The demoness snarled. "Even my own you seek to steal from me. Do you really think your pitiful toys can hold me?"

"Yup," answered Winston for all of them. His stream grazed her wings as she looped over, passing partway through the ceiling. Egon nodded; the incantation had rendered her ectoplasmic as well as returning her appearance to her true form. The damage to his scientific ego had not been a vain sacrifice.

"Then you are fools," she hissed, as she dipped down past Ray's shoulder. A voice yelped in pain, and she burst past Ray again in a wild flurry, wings stirring up a whirlwind, a small struggling blur in her talons. Peter flung himself in front of her and was tossed backwards into the reference desk; Winston tried to intercept her and missed completely. A window far too small for her shattered, and she vanished through the wall.

Winston picked himself back up from the floor. "What in the hell was that?"

"A _lilitu_," Egon answered, helping Peter up and checking him for head injuries. "We've got to go after her, hurry!"

Peter waved him off. "I'm fine, Spengs." He took off for the door.

Ray turned to Horace, who still looked like he was about to be sick. "Call an ambulance; the librarian's hurt."

"What do I tell them about Simon?" he wailed, as the Ghostbusters pounded out into the parking lot and piled into Ecto.

The engine roared to life, and Ecto galloped out of the parking lot with smoke rising from its tracks. "Which way?" Winston shouted, wrestling the wheel.

Ray bent over his PKE meter, turned sideways so his pack wasn't digging into the upholstery. "That way. Left! Dammit, she's not following the streets."

Winston took the next left; the suspension waited in protest. "And what the Hell is a _lilitu_?"

Egon looked up from his own meter. "A type of Assyrian demoness. They were associated with owls, snakes, and lions, lived in desolate places away from the cities, and preyed upon women and children."

Ray twisted around in his seat. "And had insatiable sexual appetites, but were unable to have children of their own."

"Originally, they were associated with wind and storms," Egon continued, "but over time they became known as creatures of the night. Right, Winston, turn right!"

Winston turned onto the next road and floored it. "And the whole human, sorry, demonic turkey baster thing?"

"That appears to be new," Egon said, shaking his head. "At least, I don't know of any myths in which a _lilitu_ does that sort of genetic shuffling."

"They _were_ supposed to steal children sometimes," mused Ray. "Maybe they just took them before anyone noticed the wrong-father issue. She's swinging south; Winston, can you bear left from here?"

"Haven't we been this way before?" Winston turned onto the next road, heading out of town; Ecto's headlights blazed through the deepening darkness.

"Sure have." Peter ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the sweat from over his eyes. "She's heading to the warehouse."

"Why?" Winston's eyes narrowed. "You think our other spook was guarding something?"

"Or she just wants the territory," Ray pointed out. "It's defensible, for one thing."

Peter's knuckles were white as he gripped his thrower. "Not from us." His voice dropped half an octave. "Man, I hate dealing with my exes."

\---

The main door to the warehouse was locked; Peter blew it off its hinges and raced in, the others at his heels. "All right, Lisa," he hollered into the deep shadows. "It's been a while. I know, we didn't part on the best of terms, but I think we should talk." He punctuated the last words with a burst of protons.

"You are utter fools, following me here," the demoness screeched from above them. Ray and Winston turned a pair of head-lamps on her, hovering nearly silently in the air above them; Simon struggled in her grip, the talons of her feet digging into his shoulders. His sweatshirt was stained with blood where she held him; Winston hissed through his teeth.

"Yeah, we hear that a lot. Look, Lisa," Peter continued, stepping forwards and shipping his thrower, "I know the kid there means a lot to you, and he _should_ mean a lot to me, but really, none of us know him - and to these other three guys, he's just a kid." He spread his hands out, palms up. "And it's not exactly kosher to take a kid for a hostage, anyway. You knew we had to come get him, but if you want a bargaining chip, you really want one of us, not Simon."

For a long moment, the warehouse was silent except for the faint echoes of the demoness's wingbeats. Finally, she responded, slowly, "You're right."

"Of course I'm - " Peter started, but he stopped short as she folded her wings and dove for him. He held up his hands to protect his face, but she dropped Simon at his feet, veered left just before she collided with him, and snatched Ray off the floor by one arm. The great wings pounded twice, three times, and she was gone again; Egon got off a single shot, but it went wide, singeing her feathers, as Winston ducked around Peter to scoop up Simon.

"_Ray!_ Dammit, Lisa, I was offering me, not him!" Peter let off another warning shot. Ray's headlamp streaked to the ground in front of him, shattered, and went out.

"I know. I chose him instead." A noise that might have been either laughter or the clacking of a beak rang down from the rafters. "I've had my fun with you. This one smells unspoiled, and if I tire of him, he'll make the best meal out of any of you." The stale air of the warehouse began to stir.

"We won't leave until we have Ray back," Egon called. There was a yelp of pain, and then Ray's pack crashed to the floor where his lamp had landed; Egon let out an inarticulate noise of outrage and dove for it.

"It's not safe in here," Winston said, just loud enough to be heard. "Go get in Ecto and lock the doors; the alarm system should keep you safe." Simon scuttled for the open doorway.

"The thrower's damaged, but not the accelerator core," Egon called back. "It's not going to explode, but we should be very careful moving it." He looked up. "Ray, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, but I can't get free," Ray called back. His voice was strained; Peter winced - that tone usually meant Ray was in pain.

"Such delicate things you have," chuckled the demoness. "Such delicate things you _are_. Now, shall I tell you what you will do?"

"Fat chance, Lisa," Peter called back. "You're busted."

"Hardly." A faint red glow filtered down from the rafters. "If you do not leave here, and by 'here' I mean Carter Lake and its environs, immediately, I will drop your friend. Given what happened to his devices of metal, I imagine he will splatter in a most gratifying manner."

"You can't get your jollies off of him if he's a stain on the floor," Peter pointed out, horror showing in his eyes but not, he hoped, his voice. He holstered his thrower. Could she read anything more than his fear from up there? He thought not, but he couldn't be sure.

"There are plenty of foolish men in Carter Lake who will feed my lust for flesh that way. I have no scruples against eating carrion." The red glow grew stronger; Peter could see a faint outline of her head and wings now.

"Don't listen to her!" Ray shouted. "I'll be just as dead if you leave - whoa!" The outline blurred and struggled. "Take her out, guys!" Ray cried, and then his voice was muffled.

Peter waved both hands. "Let's not be hasty, Ray. We're not giving up on you yet. Lisa, seriously, you smashed his pack; Ray's not a threat anymore. Put him down. If you want a hostage, I'll go quietly; heck, you already know how good I was in bed, and I've had _lots_ of practice since then."

Another laugh floated down. "You aren't even in my top hundred. And this one would be dangerous with a twig and a dull knife." The air began to swirl around them, kicking up long-undisturbed dust. "Leave, now, or I drop him."

Something flickered in the edges of Peter's vision. Dust, or something else? He edged forwards. "Lisa, be reasonable. We can't just leave him here."

"You can, if it means his death otherwise." The red aura outlined her fully; Ray struggled against both taloned feet.

"You'll kill him either way," Egon pointed out. "We have no reason to believe you'll show him any particular mercy if we leave him with you, and you've already stated your intent to eat him."

There was a long pause as the wind continued to build within the warehouse walls. Finally, the red aura shrugged. "Again, you're right," she said, and let go.

Simon _appeared_ in front of Winston and dropped what he was holding -

A muffled gasp from above was drowned out by Peter's scream of "No!" and Egon's bellow of "Ray!" -

Winston's foot came down hard -

A pyramid of white light shot up at Simon's feet -

And the wind went still, as the darkness turned solid with a roar.

Peter realized that he was going to have to wash this gunk out of his hair _again_, then cringed inwardly at his own vanity. One of his best friends might have just died, and he was worried about _that_? Guilt gnawed at his guts. "Ray, please be okay," he whispered into the tarry blackness.

The tangible darkness vibrated. _For a dozen years, you have committed mischief in my domain and blamed me,_ it rang. _You have taught your squadron of younglings the arts of stealth, that they may move unseen by day, but you dared not face me in my own element, nor did they._

Peter felt himself being pushed upwards, almost as if he were slowly rising through water. It was difficult not to flail as his feet left the floor.

_You preyed upon the humans and thought they would not notice. I have whispered in the dark, and a few have heard my voice. These came to drag me to their dungeon, but I will take you with me._

The ooze removed Peter's thrower, settled it in his hands, and switched it on. A pocket of air began to grow around him, and he could breathe again; he released a half-sob he'd been holding, and gulped the warm, still air gratefully.

The demoness's voice was audible now. "The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Why would you side with mortals against a fellow being of the night?"

_I am of the dark, be it day or night. I side with none; I have no quarrel with them that do not pick one._ Peter's air bubble joined another expanding one, and Winston flicked his head-lamp back on.

"You haven't realized yet who whispered in Jeremiah's ear that he should have you exterminated?" The demoness laughed again. "These fools are here at my whim, and will leave the same way."

Egon's bubble joined theirs. He held a finger to his lips, waved his PKE meter, and pointed at a spot that would soon be within their little chamber. Peter and Winston nodded and aimed.

_Then you have summoned your own doom._ The open area doubled in size almost instantly; Peter, Egon, and Winston fired in unison. The demoness shrieked like a screech owl and attempted to fly away, but the darkness blocked her, and the streams held, just barely.

"Full stream!" called Peter, and turned his own dial. The throwers bucked as her struggles were broadcast back down the proton streams, but she was caught. She flailed at the tarry wall of ectoplasm behind her, black strips flying under her claws, but it repaired itself as quickly as she could rip it away.

Two hands, one small, one broad, grabbed at the trap on Peter's pack. He spared a glance down and back; Simon unhooked the trap and handed it to Ray, who smiled and tossed it directly under the demoness's flailing wings. "Trap out!"

"Hit it!" Winston cut his stream, with Egon and Peter following a fraction of a second later. The trap snapped open, and the darkness overhead retreated out of its range; the _lilitu_ struggled, flailed, and slid down the sides of the cone of light. The trap hissed and slammed shut.

The solid darkness beneath them began to dissolve, slowly lowering the five of them to the floor. Peter watched as it shrank, swirled, and took on a vague form, a cloak of negative space in ordinary shadows. He shook his head slowly. "Well, guys, I have to admit," he said slowly, loudly, "it's really embarrassing, but I have to admit when I'm beat."

"Huh?" Simon asked. Winston shushed him and winked.

"Yeah," called Ray from the floor, equally loudly, "I guess we'll have to refund Mr. Colewood's money. That pesky ghost just wouldn't stay trapped."

The cloak rippled, and a hollow laugh echoed from it. "You have done me a great service by capturing the Other. I'll not deprive you of your petty reward." It drifted over to the trap it had been released from.

Egon crouched down, his face creased with worry. "Ray, you're hurt."

Ray winced as Egon's fingers probed at his side. "Nothing's broken. She tore me up a little bit, and I might have cracked a rib. Our quasi-elemental didn't quite catch me, but he broke my fall." Ray looked up, his eyes wide with gratitude. "He probably saved my life."

The cloak shifted, almost as if it were embarrassed. "Technically, I am a female, in the manner of my kind. And I did not wish competition from your own fierce spirit. If you had died, you would not have left."

"You're saying you didn't want Ray haunting this place with you?" Peter chuckled. "I guess I wouldn't in your position either, ma'am. But I think we'd've been able to convince him to come home with us, even as a Class Four." His voice softened. "I can't thank you enough for making it unnecessary." His gaze fell to Ray's shoulder; blood oozed from the gash in his uniform those talons had torn.

The cloak rolled, shifted, and changed to the manta shape it had taken in their previous encounter. "I truly do not wish mortals harm. I only seek to protect a home of my own." It flipped one wing. "This is no longer it. Even if you leave, others will come. The children may seek their revenge."

"Nuh-uh," protested Simon. "We, well, the older ones at least, me and Tanya and Horace and I think Robbie too, we get it now. She played like we were family, but - it was never real." He looked at his shoes. "She wanted to separate us from other humans so we'd just be her little devil-children. That's why she had us doing stuff like the graffiti and knocking old ladies over."

"Nevertheless, I do not feel safe here." The manta seemed to look towards the loft; Peter remembered the ectoplasmic splatter from earlier and reddened.

"You need someplace dark, right?" Ray asked. Egon rose to his knees and began helping Ray up from the floor; the younger man winced and leaned into his taller friend.

"Yes," the manta replied.

"There used to be some caves north of Morrisville; they'd be south and a little west of here. If they haven't been filled in for development, would those work?" Ray asked, struggling to his feet and suppressing a gasp. "They're deep enough that they're pitch-dark even during the day - we went spelunking in them a couple of times as teens."

"Perhaps. Are you letting me go, then?" The phantom hovered uncertainly.

"Yup," Peter nodded. "We're not throwing you into the containment unit, not after you saved our buddy."

"Besides," Winston added, "you weren't the one that injured Mr. Patterson and the other workers, were you?"

"Most certainly not," the phantom said indignantly. "That was the Other, and in one case her eldest thrall."

"Horace?" Simon asked. The phantom bobbed an affirmative.

"Then I don't think we have any real quarrel with you," Peter finished. "You're free to go. Free to stay, too, if you really want, but I agree that this is maybe not the greatest place, here."

"I will investigate the caves, then." The phantom brushed against Ray's temples; he closed his eyes and looked as if he were concentrating on a memory. "Thank you," he whispered.

"You are most welcome." The quasi-elemental rose up, dipped its nose and wings, and flew out through one of the loft windows, leaving an oozing mess of ectoplasm on the glass. Peter looked down; he was liberally streaked with the stuff, as were the others, but not as badly as before.

Peter leaned down and draped Ray's left arm over his shoulder. "C'mon. Let's get you back to the bed and breakfast so we can look at that rib." He offered Simon his other hand. "And we need to get you back to your mother."

"Yeah." Simon looked uncomfortable, but he took the offered hand.

As they were helping Ray into Ecto's back seat, Simon glanced into the back. "Hey, where did you get that?" he asked, pointing.

"Get what?" Winston peered over his shoulder.

"I think that's Grandma's maul handle. It went missing about a week ago," Simon said.

Peter snorted. "Of course it is. We found it here, but if you want to take it, feel free." Ray started giggling, then gasped in pain and clutched at his side; Peter forgot all about the maul handle as he helped buckle Ray in.

\---

Alicia looked at Simon as if she were a bit afraid of him, then back at Egon. "So you can't tell how long his - abilities? - will take to dissipate?"

Egon shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. Normally, this would be Ray's job, but he had, as he usually did, downplayed his injuries. His chest was bruised enough that talking hurt, he almost certainly had a cracked rib, and he'd lost a non-trivial amount of blood to his wounds. He'd insisted on coming in, but Egon was doing almost all the explaining. "It is likely that they will never go away entirely. However, in the absence of the _lilitu_'s power constantly refreshing them, they will probably fade to near-normality in a matter of months." He cleared his throat. "Simon and the others will, in all likelihood, be able to escape notice in a crowd for quite some time to come, but they will no longer be untrackable, or able to be essentially invisible when you ware specifically looking for them, unless they find some other source of psychic energy."

"We think," Ray added hoarsely. Peter shushed him, then added "Since this is the first time we've ever seen something like this, we'd like to do some periodic observations on the kids for a while. Trey's parents said no, but all the other ones have given their okay for a three-month checkup."

Alicia nodded. "I understand. I still can't say I like the idea, but I won't stand in your way."

"Thank you." Egon stood, and he and Winston began helping Ray out of his chair. Peter winced as Ray suppressed a whimper. Simon got up and offered a hand, too; his eyes were shifty and heavy with guilt.

Peter stayed in his chair. "Um, Alicia, we should probably . . . "

She bit her lip. "No, you're right. Simon, could you help the Ghostbusters take Dr. Stantz to their car?"

"Sure." Simon followed the other three out.

Peter cleared his throat. "Uh, now that we know, I should probably -"

"It wasn't your fault. You didn't know. You couldn't have known." Alicia looked out the window. "And I can't just up and marry you, or move to the city. Mother needs me out here, and there's Laura. And I don't love you anymore. I'm not sure that was ever real love, anyway - just a first crush that feels like it's going to end the world because it's so new."

Peter nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I'm not ready to settle down like that, and this isn't exactly a family-friendly job." He coughed again. "But - I remember what it was like, growing up with an absent father. It _sucked._ And I've accidentally done much worse to Simon. No, I'm not blaming myself, but - I mean, I won't claim I'm a great role-model, but I'd like to be there for him. At least, when I can."

She sighed. "As long as - I know this is selfish, but I've been sharing him with the Lady in Red for his whole life, even if I didn't know it. I kind of don't want to share him for a while. You're not going to try to legally adopt him, or anything?"

"Not if you don't want me to." Peter held up both hands, palms towards her. "I just want to be a part of his life, that's all. As much or as little as you and he are comfortable with, but I want to be there for him."

"I'll have to sort through a lot of old feelings," Alicia mused. "I need to figure out how I feel about you, now - you as a real person, as opposed to some old golden memories, or a celebrity we see on TV once in a while." She glanced out the front window; Egon and Winston were leaned over the passenger rear door of Ecto. "It'll take some time."

"I understand." Peter tried to smile; it was harder than it should have been.

"But at the same time, I know - I don't feel it yet, but I know - that in a way, she stole him from you, too." She pushed her hair behind her ears. "I have to look out for us, as a family, first, but I won't - I'll make sure I don't shut you out of his life. We'll just have to take it slow, okay?" She extended her right hand.

"Okay." He shook it, and stood up. They needed to get Ray home and to their regular doctor; she might not be able to do much for the cracked rib, but at least she could prescribe painkillers.

Simon opened the front door and leaned in. "Dr. Venkman, I think they're waiting for you."

"Be right there." He turned back to Alicia. "Thanks. And - I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm - I'm glad you came." She smiled weakly and put one hand possessively on Simon's shoulder.

Simon looked up. "Um, am I going to see you again?" He looked as if he were afraid the answer was "no."

"Count on it." Peter tousled his hair. "In about three months, if not sooner." On impulse, he leaned down and gave Simon a brief hug. "You take care."

"Okay." Simon hugged back, equally tentatively. Peter gave him another squeeze, stood back up, waved, and backed out the door.

Egon glanced at Winston. "He's going to fall backwards down the steps if he's not careful."

"Just what we need, two injured," Winston chuckled as Peter tripped on the top step but caught himself before toppling over.

"Go easy on him, guys," Ray warned. "I mean, how would you feel if you found out you were a dad and didn't even know it?"

"Not possible," the other two answered in chorus. Ray shrugged, then winced again. "I'm sure he'd have said the same," he replied.

Peter crunched across the gravel and slid into Ecto's back seat next to Ray. "Okay, guys, let's get back to the big city. I've had enough small-town gossip to last me a lifetime."

"You got it," Winston answered as he and Egon buckled themselves into the front seats.

Peter glanced at his buddy next to him as Ecto began its long roll down Carter Lake's main street. "I gotta say, I never would have dated her if I'd known this was going to happen."

"Now, Peter," Ray chided, "Just because Simon wasn't planned, and was sort of arranged by unexpected means - "

"Not Alicia," Peter interrupted. "Lisa. I'm feeling a bunch of different ways about Simon, but overall I think I'm going to be okay with being a long-distance dad once I get used to it. But," he continued, putting a hand gently on Ray's shoulder, "if I'd ever imagined Lisa would be the sort of psycho ex-girlfriend who takes it out on my best buddies -"

"Hey, it's not the first time one of your exes has tried to hit me up for revenge sex," Ray grinned.

"Really?" Peter's head came up sharply. "When did that happen?"

"Well, there was Maria your junior year, and then - "

Peter shook his head. "No, I meant when did Lisa-the-_lilitu_ hit on you?"

Winston glanced backwards. "I think she took a shot at each of us this afternoon. She just about tried to molest me in broad daylight."

"And I had just convinced her that the attempt would be fruitless when Ray arrived back at the library," Egon finished.

Ray's eyes darkened for a second. "Egon, what did she look like, for you?"

The older man glanced out the window. "A combination of several people. Either she was in a hurry, or she was over-reliant on her ability to inspire blind lust; it was . . . unconvincing."

"Yeah," Ray said, puffing slightly with the effort of speaking, "same for me. There wasn't a whole person there, just - bits." He caught Egon's gaze in the reflection in the window; the two of them locked eyes and nodded slightly.

Peter shook his head. "You mean, she didn't just appear as our favorite secretary? Spengs, you sly dog, I didn't know you had a wandering eye! What other secrets are you keeping from me?"

"Nothing," yelped Egon, his voice leaping an octave; he recovered his composure, glared back at Peter, and finished, "Just because I don't find it necessary to broadcast it to the world every time I find someone's clavicles attractive does not mean I've never looked, Peter."

Peter felt like he was missing a joke, but he brushed the uneasiness aside. "I didn't say you weren't looking, big guy; I just figured you found the ladies slightly less interesting than a well-shaped fungus." He waggled his eyebrows exaggeratedly.

Ray laughed, his eyes tightening every time his side moved. Peter dropped the clown act. "Seriously, Ray, I thought we were about to lose you for a minute there, and it just about broke me. Even if I don't figure out how to love Simon as a son, I'm gonna have to love him for saving your butt there. And speaking of that," he said, looking towards the front seat, "that was your idea, right, Winston?"

"Yup. Although stealthing it back in was all Simon; I told him to grab the trap out of Ecto and then throw it to me from the doorway." Winston shot Ray a relieved grin. "I figured the two of them wouldn't be real friendly, especially after Simon's sister mentioned that the Lady in Red was afraid of the dark."

"I wonder if she was one of the quasi-elemental's contacts," Egon said, one hand at his jaw.

"She did seem pretty precocious. We can ask when we come back up," Peter pointed out.

Ray smiled, a pale echo of his usual infectious grin. "I owe both of you, big time."

"You can pay me back in laundry," Winston answered, eyes sparkling.

"Sounds good to me. Take me back to the land of midnight pizza and Chinese takeout," Ray said, and leaned back into the seat. Peter left his hand on Ray's shoulder until his buddy fell asleep, rocking gently with the sound of the road back home.


End file.
